I got the same error when sslPassword was wrong for a particular outputs.conf entry. I determined even if you disable cert validation sslCertPath, sslPassword, and sslRootCAPath must all point at valid files, and they weren't inherited from a higher level so they must be set if the remote host is ssl. You can check if they are set elsewhere you can copy and paste into your config by using $SPLUNK_HOME/bin/splunk btool outputs list --debug
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