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eMudhra exits global SSL/TLS issuance after eight intermediate CA private keys were found to be trivially weak, one being the number 4

1 fonte(s) · 1 atualização(ões) · publicado 22/10/2026 13:58 · coletado há 2 horas

Indian certification authority eMudhra announced on 22 October 2026 that it is withdrawing from the global SSL/TLS certificate business. The announcement follows public reports that the private keys of eight intermediate CAs were trivially weak. The issue was reported to Mozilla on 17 October. The key values were 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230 and 237. eMudhra says the exit is driven by cost, competition and the scrutiny it attracted, and that SSL/TLS is about 1% of its revenue. It maintains that the affected CAs issued no end-entity certificates, were revoked within 14 hours of discovery, and that its infrastructure and data were not compromised.

Detalhes técnicos

  • The weak keys belonged to eight intermediate CAs. Anyone could recover them, so an attacker could in theory forge certificates trusted by systems that had not blocked those CAs.
  • eMudhra attributes the failure to a flaw in the key generation ceremony: a wrap/unwrap step produced a second set of weak keys alongside the intended strong ones. The weak keys were the ones published to the browser root stores.
  • The infrastructure had undergone two years of independent audits and had been in browser trust lists since mid-2025. This raises questions about why the weak keys were not caught earlier.

Remediação

  • The affected CAs have been revoked.
  • eMudhra will publish a root-cause report and fulfil its remaining commitments to browser root programs while winding down.
  • It will keep serving the G1 RSA roots until customers are moved to other certificate issuers free of charge. Revocation and status services will run until every issued certificate has expired or been replaced.

Linha do tempo

  1. theregister.com ↗ · pub. 22/10/2026 13:58 · coletado 22/10 15:00 primeiro registro

    eMudhra exits global SSL/TLS issuance after eight intermediate CA private keys were found to be trivially weak, one being the number 4

    ler a análise desta fonte

    Indian certification authority eMudhra announced on 22 October 2026 that it is withdrawing from the global SSL/TLS certificate business. The announcement follows public reports that the private keys of eight intermediate CAs were trivially weak. The issue was reported to Mozilla on 17 October. The key values were 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230 and 237. eMudhra says the exit is driven by cost, competition and the scrutiny it attracted, and that SSL/TLS is about 1% of its revenue. It maintains that the affected CAs issued no end-entity certificates, were revoked within 14 hours of discovery, and that its infrastructure and data were not compromised.

    Technical Details

    • The weak keys belonged to eight intermediate CAs. Anyone could recover them, so an attacker could in theory forge certificates trusted by systems that had not blocked those CAs.
    • eMudhra attributes the failure to a flaw in the key generation ceremony: a wrap/unwrap step produced a second set of weak keys alongside the intended strong ones. The weak keys were the ones published to the browser root stores.
    • The infrastructure had undergone two years of independent audits and had been in browser trust lists since mid-2025. This raises questions about why the weak keys were not caught earlier.

    Remediation

    • The affected CAs have been revoked.
    • eMudhra will publish a root-cause report and fulfil its remaining commitments to browser root programs while winding down.
    • It will keep serving the G1 RSA roots until customers are moved to other certificate issuers free of charge. Revocation and status services will run until every issued certificate has expired or been replaced.