Google Online Security Blog: Sustaining Digital Certificate Security - Upcoming Changes to the Chrome Root Store
Note: Google Chrome communicated its removal of default trust of Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock in the public forum on May 30, 2025. The Chrome Root Program Policy states that Certification Authority (CA) certificates included in the Chrome Root Store must provide value to Chrome end users that exceeds the risk of their continued inclusion. It also describes many of the factors we consider significant when CA Owners disclose and respond to incidents. When things don’t go right, we expect CA Owners to commit to meaningful and demonstrable change resulting in evidenced continuous improvement. Chrome's confidence in the reliability of Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock as CA Owners included in the Chrome Root Store has diminished due to patterns of concerning behavior observed over the past year. These patterns represent a loss of integrity and fall short of expectations, eroding trust in these CA Owners as publicly-trusted certificate issuers trusted by default in Chrome. To safeguard Chrome’s users, and preserve the integrity of the Chrome Root Store, we are taking the following action. Upcoming change in Chrome 139 and higher: Transport Layer Security (TLS) server authentication certificates validating to the following root CA certificates whose earliest Signed Certificate Timestamp (SCT) is dated after July 31, 2025 11:59:59 PM UTC, will no longer be trusted by default. OU=ePKI Root Certification Authority,O=Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.,C=TW CN=HiPKI Root CA - G1,O=Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.,C=TW CN=NetLock Arany (Class Gold) Főtanúsítvány,OU=Tanúsítványkiadók (Certification Services),O=NetLock Kft.,L=Budapest,C=HU TLS server authentication certificates validating to the above set of roots whose earliest SCT is on or before July 31, 2025 11:59:59 PM UTC, will be unaffected by this change. This approach attempts to minimize disruption to existing subscribers using a previously announced Chrome feature to remove default trust based on the SCTs in certificates.
