Google has finally taken action against Darkmatter which is a company accused of selling surveillance tools and hacking services based out of UAE. It is known that Mozilla already banned Darkmatter from Firefox earlier this month. Now, Google has also announced the same ban which applies to both Chrome as well as Android. This means that if you have an HTTPS certificate which is issued by Darkmatter, it will show you security-related errors.
This is because Google and Mozilla do not feel confident regarding the HTTPS certificates provided by Darkmatter. Basically, all the HTTPS connections with TLS certificates sold by Darkmatter will be under the ban. Therefore, you might see a different lock sign beside your https certificate when you see the URL bar of your Chrome browser even on Android.
Mozilla banned Darkmatter at the start of this month with the fears that the company might abuse Firefox certification store. Mozilla feared Darkmatter might issue certificates to bad actors who could snoop on users’ HTTPS traffic. This move by Mozilla was also appreciated by privacy advocates at that time. Now, Google has done the same and it can also be appreciated.
Talking about Darkmatter and its security issues, one report claims that it carried out some of these surveillance operations at the behest of the United Arab Emirates government. This suggests to us that the company is working as a government agency to attack its neighbours and activists/journalists.
While it is great that Mozilla and Google have already banned Darkmatter, it is surprising to see the silence from Apple and Microsoft on this matter. While Google is currently having the majority of users due to Chrome and Android, there are still a huge amount of users using Apple’s Safari and iOS or Microsoft’s Bing and Edge browser. So both the companies have to clarify their stance on this matter soon.