Yes, its all very well someone here shouting about "the absolutely brutal question battery the Chrome team publicly submitted to eMudhra".

But in all honesty there are serious questions to be asked about:

a) The initial approval process for ANY CA

b) The ongoing monitoring process for ANY CA

The fact this CA was based in India ultimately has nothing to do with it if we are being completely honest here.

Clearly there is a fundamental problem with the overarching approval and monitoring process which means it could have happened anywhere. This time it just happened to be India.

Secondly, in direct reference to the "far away company" comment India does have quite strict controls on both certain technical things (speaking generally here, not specifically in relation to certs ... e.g. use of sat phones). And in general it is quite difficult (read: almost impossible) to turn up in India and do business as an external company. So there is probably a genuine need for an Indian company CA since not every body can/wants to use Let's Encrypt or whatever.

> Far away company

Far away from the default country?

like most governance body, they check independent audit reports, not the actual operation.

This is a sample on what it looks like during covid lockdown : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1728790

Not to give into conspiracy theories but this company might be ideologically even if not materially aligned to current regime in India. With right kind of nudge any kind business contract is possible without any competency.

As a reminder Mozilla was warned not to add the Chinese government as a ca they pushed back claiming lack of evidence and only removed them as a ca once cnnic got caught issuing certs for google domains (by accident )

Yes, not sure what the timeline was where trust was given to this company. Just horrible for the entire secure Internet. They've yet to answer many of the basic questions raised throughout this process too.