Google Chrome To Distrust Chunghwa Telecom, Netlock Certificates

HomeNews* Google will stop trusting digital certificates from Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock starting August 2025.

• All TLS certificates from these authorities issued after July 31, 2025, will be affected in Chrome browsers.
• Users will see a full-screen security warning if they visit sites using affected certificates.
• Website owners are advised to switch to a different publicly trusted certificate authority soon.
• Apple and Mozilla have also taken actions to remove trust for other certificate authorities recently. Google has announced that its Chrome browser will no longer recognize digital certificates issued by Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock. This change will start with Chrome version 139, which is set for public release in early August 2025. All certificates from these two organizations issued after July 31, 2025, will no longer be trusted in Chrome.

• Advertisement - The decision follows what Google described as repeated issues with compliance and a lack of progress from the two certificate authorities. In a statement, the Chrome Root Program and the Chrome Security Team said, “Over the past several months and years, we have observed a pattern of compliance failures, unmet improvement commitments, and the absence of tangible, measurable progress in response to publicly disclosed incident reports.”

Once the change takes effect, users on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, Android, and Linux who try to access websites secured with affected certificates will see a full-screen security warning. Website administrators are advised to check their certificates with the Chrome Certificate Viewer and move to a new publicly trusted authority as soon as possible to avoid disruptions. Enterprises can bypass these restrictions by installing the certificate as a locally trusted root.

Chunghwa Telecom is the largest integrated telecom provider in Taiwan, and Netlock is a Hungarian company specializing in digital identity solutions, electronic signatures, and authentication. Apple has already distrusted the NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Főtanúsítvány root certificate as of November 15, 2024. For more, see Apple’s support documentation here.

This move comes after decisions by Google Chrome, Apple, and Mozilla to stop trusting certificates signed by Entrust in November 2024. Entrust’s certificate business has since been acquired by Sectigo.

In March, Google announced that the CA/Browser Forum adopted new security practices called Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration (MPIC) and Linting. These measures, described in the Baseline Requirements, aim to improve domain control validation and detect insecure certificate practices.

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