No, the customers for commercial certs are mid-level managers, who believe paying thousands of dollars for something you can also get for free means you are getting a higher quality - or in this case even believe it is "more secure". Rebranding will absolutely work for that, especially when you market your untrusted root as "ISO-certified private dedicated cloud-based PKI-as-a-Service".
The technical people will just install a certbot and use the default Let's Encrypt config.
If they wanted to continue to make money, they could: exit the business, wait a bit, change the company name, and re-enter the business. Where "change the company name" could mean starting an actual new company, but with the same people, offices, contacts (OK, small problem there) and so on.
Yes, its all very well someone here shouting about "the absolutely brutal question battery the Chrome team publicly submitted to eMudhra".
But in all honesty there are serious questions to be asked about:
a) The initial approval process for ANY CA
b) The ongoing monitoring process for ANY CA
The fact this CA was based in India ultimately has nothing to do with it if we are being completely honest here.
Clearly there is a fundamental problem with the overarching approval and monitoring process which means it could have happened anywhere. This time it just happened to be India.
Secondly, in direct reference to the "far away company" comment India does have quite strict controls on both certain technical things (speaking generally here, not specifically in relation to certs ... e.g. use of sat phones). And in general it is quite difficult (read: almost impossible) to turn up in India and do business as an external company. So there is probably a genuine need for an Indian company CA since not every body can/wants to use Let's Encrypt or whatever.
As a reminder Mozilla was warned not to add the Chinese government as a ca they pushed back claiming lack of evidence and only removed them as a ca once cnnic got caught issuing certs for google domains (by accident )
Not to give into conspiracy theories but this company might be ideologically even if not materially aligned to current regime in India. With right kind of nudge any kind business contract is possible without any competency.
Yes, not sure what the timeline was where trust was given to this company. Just horrible for the entire secure Internet. They've yet to answer many of the basic questions raised throughout this process too.
If anyone else also struggles to understand all the "4" references in the comments: One of their private keys was "4", with others also being in the 2-3 digit range.
I think this opens bigger questions on who and how people get access to these capabilities. After that recent cold wallet physical supply chain take over, what sort of people are able to get certs for anything they need?
Related: the absolutely brutal question battery the Chrome team publicly submitted to eMudhra
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2083449#c30
Why brutal? Reads very reasonable to me, nothing personal and nothing about someone or feelings everything about the entity and its obligations.
[delayed]
I think they brutally expose the utter incompetence of that company.
There's a formal press release in here:
https://emudhra.com/en/press-release/emudhra-to-exit-global-...
"will sharpen focus on... trust services other than SSL/TLS"
Is there some reputation left to salvage here that I'm not aware of? Who would trust them?
They probably have cash in the bank and want to try to put it into something that might make money. An extreme pivot.
They will probably change their name soon
Not so easy. They're a publicly traded company, the regulations are quite stringent.
Facebo...I mean Meta did it to distance themselves from the Cambridge Analytica scandal (among others).
eMuhdra is an Indian company. Maybe the regulations are different in India vs. America?
The customers for certs are technical people capable of seeing past that, so let them change it every day if they want.
No, the customers for commercial certs are mid-level managers, who believe paying thousands of dollars for something you can also get for free means you are getting a higher quality - or in this case even believe it is "more secure". Rebranding will absolutely work for that, especially when you market your untrusted root as "ISO-certified private dedicated cloud-based PKI-as-a-Service".
The technical people will just install a certbot and use the default Let's Encrypt config.
If they wanted to continue to make money, they could: exit the business, wait a bit, change the company name, and re-enter the business. Where "change the company name" could mean starting an actual new company, but with the same people, offices, contacts (OK, small problem there) and so on.
CA Forum, Apple, Google and Mozilla are to be blamed for just giving license to random no security background far away company.
Yes, its all very well someone here shouting about "the absolutely brutal question battery the Chrome team publicly submitted to eMudhra".
But in all honesty there are serious questions to be asked about:
a) The initial approval process for ANY CA
b) The ongoing monitoring process for ANY CA
The fact this CA was based in India ultimately has nothing to do with it if we are being completely honest here.
Clearly there is a fundamental problem with the overarching approval and monitoring process which means it could have happened anywhere. This time it just happened to be India.
Secondly, in direct reference to the "far away company" comment India does have quite strict controls on both certain technical things (speaking generally here, not specifically in relation to certs ... e.g. use of sat phones). And in general it is quite difficult (read: almost impossible) to turn up in India and do business as an external company. So there is probably a genuine need for an Indian company CA since not every body can/wants to use Let's Encrypt or whatever.
> Far away company
Far away from it the default country?
like most governance body, they check independent audit reports, not the actual operation.
This is a sample on what it looks like during covid lockdown : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1728790
As a reminder Mozilla was warned not to add the Chinese government as a ca they pushed back claiming lack of evidence and only removed them as a ca once cnnic got caught issuing certs for google domains (by accident )
Not to give into conspiracy theories but this company might be ideologically even if not materially aligned to current regime in India. With right kind of nudge any kind business contract is possible without any competency.
Yes, not sure what the timeline was where trust was given to this company. Just horrible for the entire secure Internet. They've yet to answer many of the basic questions raised throughout this process too.
there is not a single tech person on that leadership page¹, how did they get into the industry in the first place
[1] https://emudhra.com/en/leadership
I have four (4) takes on the matter.
If anyone else also struggles to understand all the "4" references in the comments: One of their private keys was "4", with others also being in the 2-3 digit range.
Apparently they generated them like this: https://xkcd.com/221/
“Oh you mean like PIN numbers?”
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZTqEHehcETo
I think this opens bigger questions on who and how people get access to these capabilities. After that recent cold wallet physical supply chain take over, what sort of people are able to get certs for anything they need?
eMudhra is primarily used by the Indian government, so not hard to infer how they got into allowlists.
" My new passphrase is "eMahidra4444". Now I have four-factor authentication.
nah, it's still be 2 factor, because 2 is a factor of 4!
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50195110
There must be criminal matter here.
Maybe. But not in place where this company resides and does business with the government.
Terrible company, such evasive statements. Seems ripe for disruption.
Surely they should be investigated by the local regulator.
Yes, they are being investigated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
https://www.deccanherald.com/india/meity-forms-team-to-probe...
Oh dear, never mind.
yea sure, blame social media cause you are incompetent. nice
I'm still waiting to read their post mortem with their ~~5~~ 4 Whys
This press release was brought to you by the number 4
That's numberwang!
"You can't fire me, I quit!"
[dead]