🇮🇳 Your BANK, your email, practically ANY website could have been impersonated, with your browser none the wiser.
All thanks to one company's INSANE security blunder.
Indian company eMudhra, trusted to certify that websites are genuine, used EIGHT cryptographic keys so ridiculously weak they could be cracked almost instantly.
How weak? A normal key relies on a secret number roughly 116 digits long.
eMudhra's secret numbers? Just 4, 56 and 237. These are NOT pieces of the keys. They were the ACTUAL numbers! 🤯
Anyone with those keys could have forged trusted certificates for virtually any website, potentially fooling your browser if they intercepted your connection.
Major browsers have already blocked the keys, and there's no confirmed malicious use so far.
But cleaning up older devices and software could be a nightmare. An expert warns it could be bigger than Heartbleed, the infamous 2014 security disaster that took years to fix, because millions of old devices and systems still need updating.
And here we are, being told our passwords need another capital letter and a special character.
Source: Ars Technica / Writer: Julie