I was very pleased to see that the SSL-related MySQL Bug #62743 was just fixed.
Here is the bug for reference:
http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=62743
In essence, the –ssl-key value was not validated, thus anything could have been specified there.
Your connection would have still been SSL encrypted, which was good at least, but your SSL Key would not have made any difference.
This fix will be included in versions 5.1.66, 5.5.28, 5.6.7, 5.7.0.
For reference, here is the entry that will go into the changelogs:
“The argument to the –ssl-key option was not verified to exist
and be
a valid key. The resulting connection used SSL, but the key was
not
used.”