https: do not inherit httplib.HTTPSConnection that creates unused SSLContext HTTPSConnection of Python 2.7.9 creates SSLContext in __init__, which involves a password prompt for decrypting the private key. This means the password was asked twice, one for unused SSLContext, and next for our ssl function. Because our httpsconnection replaces connect() method at all, we can simply drop httplib.HTTPSConnection. Instead, class and instance attributes are copied from it. HTTPSConnection of Python 2.7.8 and 2.6.9 seem to have no such problem. https://hg.python.org/cpython/file/v2.7.9/Lib/httplib.py#l1183