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It was "multiple human errors". But yeah no matter what, in any case or exceptional circumstances, this thing was not supposed to be screwed up.

On Mozilla’s tracker, eMudhra said the keys were created on 30 April 2025 in a key generation ceremony, a recorded procedure in which keys are produced inside hardware security modules (HSMs), tamper-resistant devices built to hold keys. The keys were meant to be moved to data centres in the United States and Europe for customers needing data stored in those regions. To move them, the company added a step to ‘wrap’ each key, or encrypt it for transfer, and ‘unwrap’ it at the other end. eMudhra said a flaw in the software script created a second, weaker set of keys during this step, and because the two sets had similar names, staff used the weaker ones by mistake. It said human errors occurred at multiple steps.

source:

What's the eMudhra security scare that has rattled the internet?

https://theprint.in/tech/whats-the-emudhra-security-scare-th...

These "wrapping" keys were not "weaker". They were completely unfit for purpose. They have not explained why they used a 3-bit key for this purpose.

If they go to the trouble of wrapping them, use real keys. Or don't do it.

Also, it's a big "human error" to not notice this for a year and a half.

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Yeah. I can't think of any development process where you wouldn't simply use a production grade key in development. In fact, that's exactly what we do in development with snake oil keys.

Generating a key with "4" was probably done as a joke, but also is insane to have ever lived outside some devs computer.

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