A digital passport allows safe communication of information between a person, organization or computer, without fear of interference, over Internet. It is like an electronic passport. The technology giants Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) have claimed that the NIC – National Informatics Center – supplied similar unauthorized certificates.

On Monday, the government declared that it is investigating the matter. Certifying Authorities, or CAs, are responsible for issuing digital certificates for electronically authenticating their users on the Internet. Meanwhile, CCA – Controller of Certifying Authorities, regulate the operation of CAs and issue licenses to them. The secretary of the department of electronics and information, R.S. Sharma, was contacted by the PTI. He told them that an investigation is being performed into the issue that was raised and that they are ensuring that the CAs are working under the CCAs guidance. Last week, in a blog post, Google said that they had discovered several unauthorized digital certificates for Google Domains as of 2^nd July. According to the blog, the digital certificates in question were issued by the Indian NIC, which was trusted by the Indian CCA with several CA certificates and licenses.

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Meanwhile, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) also claimed that they had come to know of some SSL certificates, that were improperly issued by the Indian NIC which is licensed by the CAs under Indian government’s CCAs. The unauthorized SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates can be potentially used for cyber crimes like phishing, spoofing and man-in-middle attacks.

CCA posted on their website where they claim that three CA certificates that were issued to the NICCA have been revoked because of security reasons. They also claimed that they have uploaded the new CRLs, certification revocation lists. In case of further updates, the organization will soon notify. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) had already taken steps – it blocked the offending certificates from it well known browser, Google Chrome. This was done with the help of a CRLSet push, this sends updated CRLs. Google also informed the NIC, Microsoft and the Indian CCA that such and such certification has been issued, a matter which needs to be addressed immediately. According to Google, the CCA in India informed the company that they had revoked all the intermediate certificates to the NIC on July 3^rd. Google performed one more CLRSet push so that this revocation can be included.

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The CCA in United States proclaimed that as of July 8^th, the CCA in India informed them of the results of the investigations that were carried out in this issue. According to their report, the issuance process of the NIC has been compromised. Four certificates were wrongly issued on 25 June. Among them, three were for Google domain and one was for Yahoo. A digital certificate carries details that can be used to identify the holder of the certificate. It contains a serial number, the name of the holder, dates of expiration, digital signature by CA and a copy of the public key of the holder, this key is used to encrypt the signatures and messages for safe communication.

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