eMudhra Limited, an India-based certificate authority, announced it would cease operations in the global SSL/TLS certificate business following a major security incident. The decision came after the company issued eight intermediate certificates with severely defective private keys, rendering them trivial to compromise.
Researchers discovered that the certificates, which should have contained approximately 384 bits of cryptographic entropy under NIST P-384 elliptic curve standards, instead contained private keys ranging from 3 to 8 bits. The weakest keys had values as low as 4, meaning an attacker could discover them in milliseconds. This allowed anyone to generate fraudulent TLS certificates that would be trusted by major web browsers and numerous other systems including email servers, IoT devices, and Docker containers.
eMudhra attributed the flaw to an error during a Key Generation Ceremony held on April 30, 2025. According to the company, a flawed script intended to test a wrap-unwrap key transfer process between hardware security modules created a second set of weak keys alongside properly generated keys. Through a combination of human error and labeling confusion, the weaker keys were mistakenly used to create certificate signing requests that were then signed and published to browser root stores. The company noted that the initial certificate revocation list signatures proved incorrect, raising questions about why the anomalies were not investigated.
Browser manufacturers blocked the compromised certificates within one to two days of discovery. eMudhra faced likely removal from the CA/Browser Forum, the industry body governing TLS certificate program standards. In its exit announcement, company leadership cited the high costs and complexity of compliance requirements, combined with the business representing only 1 percent of eMudhra’s revenue. The company also noted increased competition from free certificate providers had reduced profitability in the segment.
With browser-based protections deployed, immediate threats from the certificates were substantially mitigated. However, devices unable to rapidly implement blocks, particularly embedded systems lacking update mechanisms, remained potentially vulnerable to attack using the compromised credentials.
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