Indian certification authority eMudhra’s private keys compromised – one of them was the number ‘4’ - The Register

Certificate authority eMudhra revoked eight compromised intermediate certificates after researchers found their private keys were so weak that anyone could recover them almost instantly and use them to forge trusted certificates for legitimate websites. Major browsers and operating systems trusted the compromised certificates, potentially allowing attackers to impersonate legitimate websites and intercept encrypted communications.

Tech giants have deployed emergency blocks against eight vulnerable digital certificates that could allow attackers to impersonate legitimate websites. By Tuesday, browser developers and other major technology companies had deployed protections against eight intermediate certificates issued by India-based certificate authority eMudhra Limited after discovering that their private keys were insufficiently secure. Mozilla cryptography engineer Dennis Jackson wrote in an incident report that Mozilla independently recovered the private keys when it first received notice of the flaw on Saturday, confirming that the key-generation process was “flawed” and “trivial to exploit.” An attacker who intercepts a user’s connection could use fraudulent certificates to impersonate a legitimate website and potentially read or alter the information exchanged, according to Mozilla. While many companies quickly blocked the affected certificates, the threat remains for applications and systems that don’t receive those blocks automatically.

Crude oil prices ticked higher earlier today, extending gains from Tuesday as traders continued to worry about the stability of flows out of the Middle East. At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at $110.30 per barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at $99.12 per barrel, both up by over 1% from Tuesday. The latest inventory report out of the U. S. contributed to the bullish sentiment with another sizable draw estimated for last week. The rally also comes despite a Wall Street Journal report from Tuesday that said oil flows out of the Middle East had topped pre-war levels in the week to October 18, running at a daily average of 24 million barrels. The report cited data from Kpler, which Reuters had cited in a separate report as estimating Hormuz flows specifically at 8.5 million barrels daily, because of intensified Iranian attacks. For the WSJ report, the Hormuz flows were estimated at 14 million barrels daily.

Tech mogul says tie-up has a ‘lot of merit’, given firms’ complementary work on AI. Elon Musk has revealed that SpaceX and Tesla are exploring a possible merger, a tie-up that would create a corporate colossus worth more than $3 trillion. Musk said on Tuesday that his two largest companies had established special committees to explore a merger. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4NATO to send additional patrol planes to Black Sea after drone attackslist 2 of 4Moment plane crashes on a busy highway in the USlist 3 of 4King Charles welcomes Omani sultan, hails peace efforts in UK state visitlist 4 of 4One year on: Has Kenya’s opposition lost its way without Raila Odinga?end of listThe SpaceX and Tesla CEO said the idea had a “lot of merit”, given the companies’ complementary work on artificial intelligence, but the committees had not come to any agreement on a proposal. “They’ve got to come up with something, and then that’s got to be put to the shareholders as a vote,” Musk said on a SpaceX earnings call.

In its third-quarter earnings report release on Tuesday, streaming giant Netflix beat many expectations, but still delivered some unwanted news to investors: viewer metrics, especially in the United States, could be better. In the report, the company reported its slowest revenue increase in years, and also revised its outlook for the year, particularly upsetting investors by saying that it is now expecting $2.7 billion in ad revenue instead of the previously projected $3 billion. Netflix’s position as the leading subscription-based streaming service worldwide has done little to quell investor fears that it is losing viewers to the likes of YouTube and TikTok. Its stock was down more than 40% this past year, per WSJ. The slide began when Netflix announced its now-failed intention to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which is now a part of David Ellison’s Skydance instead. The latest earnings report didn’t necessarily help that downward trend by sending the stock down almost 6%. Going into the report, investors were already worried about viewer metrics, and specifically something called view hours growth, the amount of time viewers spend watching stuff on Netflix.