Disgraced Indian cert issuer leaves the cert issuing business

After embarrassing reports revealed weak private keys, one of which was just a single digit, Indian certification authority eMudhra has decided to take the L and get out of the global SSL/TLS cert game entirely.

eMudhra announced Thursday that it was abandoning that arm of its business. Sure, the intense scrutiny heaped on the company was a factor, but the firm also argued that growing compliance costs and competition from free certificate providers had made the business increasingly difficult to justify.

“Global SSL/TLS is a small part of eMudhra’s business contributing to about 1 percent of the global revenue,” the company explained, noting that free SSL/TLS cert issuance from large firms and increased compliance and data sovereignty requirements have made it a minor part of the firm’s operation, and one that doesn’t merit so much bad press.

“The level of social media amplification around this incident has brought scrutiny that is out of proportion to SSL/TLS’s place in our business,” …