> That's really strange, changes between 1.0.12 and 1.0.14 are
> minimal. Could you please re-try with 1.0.12 to see if it works
> for you without problems?
Will do, Maxim. I have to rebuild the RPM again, as I tossed the previous version from yum repository.

> As already suggested - you may build nginx with any particular
> openssl version statically, by using --with-openssl= configure
> argument.

Personally, I don't think is a good idea at all to compile source on a production server. I only use RPM's for the sake of easy upgrades, I build my own missing RPM's for that task. Either ways, the answer is clear, in order to have Nginx working properly with SSL in a production environment will require to upgrade to CentOS 6 which has openssl 1.0.0 RPM available. I thought it was a bug that generates those random crit issues.