diff --git a/morss/crawler.py b/morss/crawler.py
index af32d69..57ff633 100644
--- a/morss/crawler.py
+++ b/morss/crawler.py
@@ -14,6 +14,88 @@ MIMETYPE = {
     'html': ['text/html', 'application/xhtml+xml', 'application/xml']}
 
 
+# SSL-related code proudly copy-pasted from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1087227/validate-ssl-certificates-with-python
+
+class InvalidCertificateException(httplib.HTTPException, urllib2.URLError):
+    def __init__(self, host, cert, reason):
+        httplib.HTTPException.__init__(self)
+        self.host = host
+        self.cert = cert
+        self.reason = reason
+
+    def __str__(self):
+        return ('Host %s returned an invalid certificate (%s) %s\n' %
+                (self.host, self.reason, self.cert))
+
+
+class CertValidatingHTTPSConnection(httplib.HTTPConnection):
+    default_port = httplib.HTTPS_PORT
+
+    def __init__(self, host, port=None, key_file=None, cert_file=None,
+                             ca_certs=None, strict=None, **kwargs):
+        httplib.HTTPConnection.__init__(self, host, port, strict, **kwargs)
+        self.key_file = key_file
+        self.cert_file = cert_file
+        self.ca_certs = ca_certs
+        if self.ca_certs:
+            self.cert_reqs = ssl.CERT_REQUIRED
+        else:
+            self.cert_reqs = ssl.CERT_NONE
+
+    def _GetValidHostsForCert(self, cert):
+        if 'subjectAltName' in cert:
+            return [x[1] for x in cert['subjectAltName']
+                         if x[0].lower() == 'dns']
+        else:
+            return [x[0][1] for x in cert['subject']
+                            if x[0][0].lower() == 'commonname']
+
+    def _ValidateCertificateHostname(self, cert, hostname):
+        hosts = self._GetValidHostsForCert(cert)
+        for host in hosts:
+            host_re = host.replace('.', '\.').replace('*', '[^.]*')
+            if re.search('^%s$' % (host_re,), hostname, re.I):
+                return True
+        return False
+
+    def connect(self):
+        sock = socket.create_connection((self.host, self.port))
+        self.sock = ssl.wrap_socket(sock, keyfile=self.key_file,
+                                          certfile=self.cert_file,
+                                          cert_reqs=self.cert_reqs,
+                                          ca_certs=self.ca_certs)
+        if self.cert_reqs & ssl.CERT_REQUIRED:
+            cert = self.sock.getpeercert()
+            hostname = self.host.split(':', 0)[0]
+            if not self._ValidateCertificateHostname(cert, hostname):
+                raise InvalidCertificateException(hostname, cert,
+                                                  'hostname mismatch')
+
+
+class VerifiedHTTPSHandler(urllib2.HTTPSHandler):
+    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
+        urllib2.AbstractHTTPHandler.__init__(self)
+        self._connection_args = kwargs
+
+    def https_open(self, req):
+        def http_class_wrapper(host, **kwargs):
+            full_kwargs = dict(self._connection_args)
+            full_kwargs.update(kwargs)
+            return CertValidatingHTTPSConnection(host, **full_kwargs)
+
+        try:
+            return self.do_open(http_class_wrapper, req)
+        except urllib2.URLError, e:
+            if type(e.reason) == ssl.SSLError and e.reason.args[0] == 1:
+                raise InvalidCertificateException(req.host, '',
+                                                  e.reason.args[1])
+            raise
+
+    https_request = urllib2.HTTPSHandler.do_request_
+
+# end of copy-paste code
+
+
 class GZIPHandler(urllib2.BaseHandler):
     def http_request(self, req):
         req.add_unredirected_header('Accept-Encoding', 'gzip')
diff --git a/morss/morss.py b/morss/morss.py
index 9c89391..74a5d83 100644
--- a/morss/morss.py
+++ b/morss/morss.py
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ THREADS = 10  # number of threads (1 for single-threaded)
 
 DEBUG = False
 
+CA_CERT = 'cacert.pem' # ca cert file
 DEFAULT_UA = 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0'
 
 MIMETYPE = {
@@ -211,7 +212,8 @@ class Cache:
             return self
 
 
-default_handlers = [crawler.GZIPHandler(), crawler.UAHandler(DEFAULT_UA),
+default_handlers = [crawler.VerifiedHTTPSHandler(ca_certs=CA_CERT),
+                    crawler.GZIPHandler(), crawler.UAHandler(DEFAULT_UA),
                     crawler.AutoRefererHandler(), crawler.MetaRedirectHandler(),
                     crawler.EncodingFixHandler()]
 
@@ -432,6 +434,8 @@ def Fetch(url, cache, options):
             xml = con.read()
         except (urllib2.HTTPError) as e:
             raise MorssException('Error downloading feed (HTTP Error %s)' % e.code)
+        except (crawler.InvalidCertificateException) as e:
+            raise MorssException('Error downloading feed (Invalid SSL Certificate)')
         except (IOError, httplib.HTTPException):
             raise MorssException('Error downloading feed')