Kazakhstan spies on citizens’ HTTPS traffic; browser makers fight back

Dan Goodin reports:

Google, Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft said they’re joining forces to stop Kazakhstan’s government from decrypting and reading HTTPS-encrypted traffic sent between its citizens and overseas social media sites.

All four of the companies’ browsers recently received updates that block a root certificate the government has been requiring some citizens to install. The self-signed certificate caused traffic sent to and from select websites to be encrypted with a key controlled by the government. Under industry standards HTTPS keys are supposed to be private and under the control only of the site operator.

Read more on Ars Technica.