Chrome To Have Its Own SSL Certificate Root Store Soon

The search engine company Google has announced that it will include its own root store in the Chrome browser in the future. So far, the browser has used the operating system to validate HTTPS connections. Firefox has had its own system for some time.

A so-called root store is required to verify the validity of certificates. When an encrypted HTTPS connection is established, the browser checks whether the SSL certificate for a page was generated by a certificate contained in the root store. This means that the connection between the user and the originally requested page cannot be compromised as part of a man-in-the-middle attack.

Chrome uses the Trusted Root Program

As ZDNet writes, Chrome has been using the root store of the operating system on which the browser is running since its launch in 2009. While the Microsoft Trusted Root Program is used on Windows systems, the Apple Root Certificate Program is used on macOS. Now Google has announced that the browser will have its own root store with the Chrome Root Program. The function will soon be available in all Chrome versions with the exception of the iOS app.

No schedule for the change is known yet

When the changeover will take place is currently still fairly unclear. There is no official schedule yet. With its own root store, Google will follow the same approach as Mozilla in the future. Firefox has been using its own database since its inception to validate SSL certificates in the context of HTTPS connections.