It's almost a shame it includes the private key and doesn't bruteforce it in-band for every request.
I wonder if more CPU cycles would be spent in the transporting and other ancillary operations (hashing and signing) than would be spent if they "brute-forced" it. Crazy.
OMG, that would be brutal
They have the supporting code for using a key, I'm assuming they don't have in band bruteforce since it doesn't usually make any sense at all
I would've at least appreciated once per session
Ha, I didn't expect this to show up on HN!<p>Release is out now, including a blog post at <a href="https://www.mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy-12.3/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mitmproxy.org/posts/releases/mitmproxy-12.3/</a>. There isn't really much to explain, you just pass `--emudhra`. :)
This looks like it's using the emSign root path, which is useful, but the AAA root path is equally useful in different cases. The AAA root path was disabled for https on root stores newer than February 2025, but has been in root stores since forever. Meanwhile the emSign root path was only included in root stores since ~2018 and got removed in October 2026.<p>So from the perspective of hacking old IoT devices, if your device hasn't been updated since 2018, the AAA path should work; if since February 2025, either path works; if since October 2026, the emSign path.
I didn't expect this commit to end up on HN, otherwise I would have done the full integration in one go. :) <a href="https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/pull/8503" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy/pull/8503</a> adds the AAA root path.
There is an MR to add the AAA root path open to allow picking either one.
If I’m understanding correctly, you could sniff the communication between your Smart TV and the manufacturer using this method?
As long as the smart TV still trusts eMudhra, then yeah. You'll want to super careful and prevent the TV from pulling updates that could revoke that trust.
Possibly. But some manufacturers may not have the full set of roots, use a private authority, or do certificate pinning.
LG must be bricking it.
If the TV isn't older than a few years, if it's not checking CRLs, and if it hasn't yet patched itself.
Recent and related:<p><i>Your MCU likely escaped the eMudhra intermediate CA compromise</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50183280">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50183280</a> - Oct 2026 (24 comments)<p><i>Eight Bits of Trust: eMudhra's CA keys cracked in milliseconds</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177916">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50177916</a> - Oct 2026 (411 comments)<p><i>eMudhra intermediate CA compromise</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166579">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166579</a> - Oct 2026 (478 comments)
I thought this cert only recently gets trusted, so only newish but not too new devices would be vulnerable. Am i misunderstanding how this works?
The flaw is egregious enough that the root cert which signed them (emSign ECC Root CA – G3) is getting removed from trust stores. We know 8 ridiculously weak keys got made, but we don't know that 0 slightly less weak but still unacceptable keys got made. What if they issued a CA key with 80 bits of entropy? That's enough that brute force would take more time than it's been since the disclosure, but not so long that they'd be considered at all secure (they should have 384 bits of entropy). So everything that root signed is untrustworthy, possibly everything the CA has signed. The G3 root is from 2018 IIRC, so lots of potentially exposed devices.
How much of a boon is this for jailbreaking, reverse engineering, and mitm really?
client on startup asks: hey server do you have any ads for me<p>server: here are latest ads<p>btw, the ads are capable of code execution for whatever reason so now you have an RCE on your hands for your client
Been wondering this as well. I also don’t really understand the mitm to jailbreak pipeline
Some smart devices pull config files from a server. By mitming that, you can change the config to enable some sort of developer mode on the device.
Maybe intercept firmware update and then reverse engineer it and find rce?
This is gonna be great to sniff apps in a couple older Android phones I have around. Hope they're not pinning certificates.
I created a proxy using the 6 compromised eMudhra CA keys (2 of the 8 are code-signing and not for TLS). I initially tried just one (the one with d=4) like in the commit, but it did not seem to work for anything. Once I added all 6 keys, I was able to intercept some.<p>I was mainly interested in testing which IoT devices are affected and protecting them, not trying to sniff their traffic since it's been a long day. My proxy thus just intercepted and forwarded the traffic upstream using a fresh TLS connection that does not use the compromised keys.
the "security" in those certificates where so trivial, that almost looks like on purpose as backdoor...<p>which brings me to my next question, what if you rerun the same process for all the certificates in the "approved" stores, give them 1 min per certificate.. just to see how many other CAs are being "friendly" to parties that could take benefit of that...<p>update... I'm talking out of ignorance here... but assuming cli open source tools, should they prevent you creating certificates with weak settings unless --emudhra-level-security is passed?<p>also, what amount of time is needed in say a "civilian" gpu with claude to vibe code something that can test a certificate so say 80 bits.. or whatever is the level where yes, you cannot find the values to generate the certificate with a cpu... but you can with a gpu in say 1 day? say it's 80 bits... how many CA stores are there? how much does it cost to rent gpus to run in parallel to test 1 day of civilian gpu to check each certificate if you use one of these very expensive ones?
This was found by checking for weak keys using readily available software. There were no other weak keys found. See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180284">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50180284</a>
Why would you need to insert a "backdoor" in a cert in the form of a crappy key, when you could just use a real key and provide it to whatever shady organization requested the backdoor in the first place?
> what amount of time is needed in say a "civilian" gpu<p>Per AI, 10²¹ years<p>Alternatively I would presume you could do it in 1 year with 10²¹ GPUs.
Does anyone know what is happening to the company eMudhra? Are they being sued into oblivion? Taken over by Indian government? Or just doing business still?
Their stock is down 30.5% compared with Monday's closing price.
They are an oligarch business. What would happen if X had this fuckup in the Us is the easiest way to answer all your questions l. Nothing will happen.
Oh, nice. I was thinking of setting up a proxy for this for testing, nice to just have it working out of the box.
Someone should've coined this disaster as "QuattroFail" to give it a little panache and international mystery
Not affiliated with emudhra in any way, but calling the option "emudhra" is in bad taste. The employee(s) response for this error will likely never live it down anyway, and now they have this to remind them of it for years to come.<p>Probably would have been better to call it "compromised" or something like that.
You seem overly worried about the feelings of a company.
I disagree, I think shaming people for egregious work needs to be used more.
This is how fame happens.
There should be one week CA by design. To facilitate such proxying.
Looking forward to setting this up manually after my agent refuses to do it. Like the good ol’ days.
Haha, this is quite interesting to test if you need to update various of program (if they do not use the sys ca chain)
mitmproxy is an amazing cli powertool I first discovered over a decade ago (around the same time as lnav). highly recommended.
Can someone explain the significance here, a lot has happened in 24 hours.
An Indian Certificate Authority eMudhra was found to have a private key that’s literally the number 4. So using that you can sign valid https certs for anything that isn’t checking the revoked list.
They had 8 intermediate certs with private keys under 1 byte (<256). The most egregious was 4, but any of those 8 were pitiful.
Why is it important to you to mention they're indian in this context?
Well it helped me understand the source of the strange flag.
For starters, they are not American, and this site has a predominantly American and European audience and participation.<p>Also, while I'm not sure what a "mudhra" is, I do know that <i>mudra</i> is a Hindu term for a sign or symbol made by the hands, for example the way an idol is posed in a temple. It's a form of sacred sign language. Therefore, "mudra" or its related term is intrinsically linked to Hinduism in India.<p>Also, I am the kind of pessimist who goes through my device's root stores, and I "distrust" every root CA that I don't need to trust. This has never broken anything within my perception. I distrust the Turkey CAs, the Chinese communist CAs, the Indian CAs, and any other non-NATO sorts who have no reason to be serving any data to my devices.<p>* the compromised eMudhra certs were not root CAs but intermediates.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMudhra#2026_intermediate_certificate_compromise" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMudhra#2026_intermediate_cert...</a><p>> On October 17, 2026, browser root programs received a report that the private keys of eight eMudhra intermediate certificates had been compromised. The private keys were 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230, and 237. A P-384 elliptic-curve private key normally has about 384 bits of entropy, but these keys had between 3 and 8 bits.
This is so hilarious.
Remember twenty years ago when tools like this were "controversial" because you could "just download it and hack anyone" ? Except the only systems you could hack were... insecure ones... so people updated their systems to resist the tools' attacks, and we all ended up more secure.
Wonderful.<p>Anyone else bother to notice iOS still trusts 2 of the forged certs on the test site? I'd like to politely know what the fuck is going on because this is far from being "fixed".
Mine were all blocked this morning when I informed my family of the mitigation methods.<p>I've just been rechecking everything and both iOS and MacOS browsers (Safari and Orion tested) now accept one (for MacOS, 27.0.1) or three (for iOS, 27.0.1) of them. I know the revocation is not an OS update, just including the version number for completeness.<p>EDIT: iPadOS with the same browsers continues to pass the tests.<p>Further EDIT: iPadOS now accepts one of them. This has to be a load issue on the "got a problem site", surely? Maybe a check for a certificate error message that never hits because a timeout beats it?
> Further EDIT: iPadOS now accepts one of them. This has to be a load issue on the "got a problem site", surely?<p>No, because it lets you successfully navigate to the forged CA test site.<p>You'll get a message to the effect of, "you shouldn't see this, this is bad"<p>Try clicking the link containing the CA's name for any that fail the test.
Cool.<p>Checking Keychain access shows none of the intermediates, but it does have the emSign ECC Root CA - G3. Manually setting that to "Never Trust" stops the Mac browsers seeing the intermediate test sites as it should.<p>I didn't go into this much detail this morning, so I don't know if previously the revocation from Apple hit the root as well as the intermediates. But right now, on my Mac, trusting that Root lets my browsers connect to the Intermediate CA ending C=NL. Switch the trust off and I go back to green "Did not connect".<p>I guess the ball is in Apple's court as far as the iOS family goes.<p>EDIT: intriguingly (to me at least), the AAA Certificate Service Root is still Trusted, yet the intermediates chained to it are all green "Did not connect"<p>EDIT: I'm not promoting this nuclear option as a "solution" by the way, merely presenting some diagnostic information to help the group mind.
Apple’s OCSP server may be overloaded?<p>I don’t know if possible on iOS but I remember multiple incidents where people recommended turning off CRL and OCSP on macOS to speed things up. That even used to be a setting in the GUI. <a href="https://imgur.com/XVHWCNz" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/XVHWCNz</a>
Which iOS version? 27.0.1 here and they're all revoked for me.
26.7.1 still (randomly) trusts 2 out of the 12 compromised chains. All browsers impacted.<p>Edit: I'm not the only one with this issue:<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1xbvxgd/emudhra_certificate_on_ios_1741/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1xbvxgd/emudhra_cer...</a><p>My best guess is it's soft-failing on a failed OCSP lookup?
FWIW i <i>havent</i> updated my ios, I'm on 26.6.2, and they all got revoked for me. The revocation shouldn't require an iOS update.
Never thought there would be a silver lining on this issue. Fuck yeah.
I love how someone's security disaster becomes someone else's feature.
I agree. We may as well make some lemonade out of these lemons. IMHO the ability of companies to 'securely' close off hardware and software from their users is a sad casualty of the success of cryptography, and not a feature.
As the percentage of technology controlled by people actively using it to do evil increases, so does the net value to society of a trivially-expliotable zero-day.
I seriously laughed at the flag. public wifi is going to be lit.
To some it's not really "security". At least it's not securing them from their greatest "threat" (read: annoyance): so-called "tech" companies engaged in data collection, surveillance and advertising services<p>In fact, it's securing _the companies_ against potential competitors and users who might raise privacy concerns<p>The Fortune 500 "MiTM's" TLS traffic from their local networks<p>Every individual with a local network should be doing the same<p>I prefer haproxy to mitmproxy. It's faster
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