Eight eMudhra TLS certificates had private keys of 3 to 8 bits
Original title: The Internet goes on high alert after discovery of 8 compromised TLS certs
The private keys were the integers 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230 and 237, versus a normal P-384 key.
Ars Technica reports eight compromised eMudhra TLS certificates whose elliptic-curve private keys held only 3 to 8 bits, not the roughly 384 bits of a normal NIST P-384 key. The values given are 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230 and 237. Engineers quoted say a key that small should not be possible and guess at a mistaken size parameter or example code reaching production. The article uses the 2014 Heartbleed recovery only as historical contrast and does not name a current exploit.
Unconfirmed: How the keys were generated, and whether they were used in attacks, is not confirmed.
- A normal NIST P-384 private key is described as having about 384 bits of entropy.
- Quoted engineers say nobody noticed keys this small before the discovery.
- The cause of the defective keys is not established in the report.
Impact: Eight TLS certificates had trivially small private keys
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| eMudhra TLS certificates | — |
- Vendors
- eMudhra
- Products
- TLS certificates
From the original article
1 min read at arstechnica.com
Intermediate certs allow anyone to mint web credentials for any Internet server.
By Dan Goodin · arstechnica.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.