Egyptian company says rogue Google SSL certificates were a mistake

An Egyptian company that created unauthorized digital certificates for several Google domains said Wednesday it made a mistake and acted quickly when the error became known.

The SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layers/Transport Layer Security) certificates would have allowed MCS Holdings of Cairo to decrypt traffic sent by users on its network to Google, a major privacy concern. Google said it doesn’t believe the certificates were misused.

But MCS shouldn’t have been able to create digital certificates for Google properties in the first place. It appears MCS and a Certificate Authority (CA) in China both made mistakes, which highlight ongoing problems in the way digital certificates are issued.

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