Mozilla Company intermediate certificates of the DarkMatter CA to the list (), the use of which leads to a warning in the Firefox browser.
Certificates blocked after four months of parsing DarkMatter for inclusion in Mozilla's list of root certificates. So far, trust in DarkMatter has been provided by intermediate certificates authenticated by the current QuoVadis CA, but the DarkMatter root certificate has not yet been added to browsers. DarkMatter's pending request to add a root certificate, as well as all new requests from DigitalTrust (a subsidiary of DarkMatter dedicated to running the CA business), are recommended to be denied.
During the analysis, problems with entropy during the generation of certificates were identified and possible facts of using DarkMatter certificates to organize surveillance and intercept HTTPS traffic surfaced. Reports of the use of DarkMatter certificates for surveillance came from several independent sources, and since issuing certificates for such purposes violates Mozilla's requirements for certification authorities, it was decided to block DarkMatter intermediate certificates.
In January, Reuters information about DarkMatter's involvement in the "Project Raven" operation, conducted by the special forces of the United Arab Emirates to compromise the accounts of journalists, human rights activists and foreign representatives. In response, DarkMatter stated that the information provided in the article is not true.
In February, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Mozilla, Apple, Google and Microsoft do not include DarkMatter in their root certificate stores and revoke valid intermediate certificates. Representatives of the EFF compared DarkMatter's application to add root certificates to the list with a fox trying to get into a chicken coop.
Similar references to DarkMatter's involvement in organizing surveillance were later mentioned in an investigation conducted by the publication. . At the same time, no direct evidence was presented, and DarkMatter continued to deny his involvement in the mentioned operations of the special services. Ultimately, Mozilla, after weighing the positions of various parties, came to the conclusion that maintaining the trust in DarkMatter posed a significant risk to users.
Source: opennet.ru