Google says it will no longer trust root CA certificates signed by Chunghwa Telecom and Netlock in the Chrome Root Store due to a pattern of compliance failures and failure to make improvements.
The change will come in Google Chrome version 139, which is scheduled for release on August 1, 2025.
The tech giant cites ongoing compliance failures, broken improvement commitments, and lack of measurable progress as the reasons for this action.
"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,"
reads the announcement.
"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."
Chunghwa Telecom is Taiwan's largest telecom provider, operating internet, mobile, and fixed-line services. It runs a public Certificate Authority (CA) called ePKI and HiPKI, issuing digital certificates for secure web communications.
Netlock is a significant Hungarian provider of digital certification services (electronic signatures, timestamping, and TLS/SSL certificates), best known for its Arany (Gold Class) Root CA, which is widely used in Hungary and other European countries.
