The internet has been scrambling to patch a hole in the system that tells your browser which websites are real.

It started on Oct. 17, when a researcher told browser makers that eight secret keys at eMudhra, an Indian company that vouches for websites, have been compromised.

A researcher named Wayne reported the security flaw and to prove the vulnerability, he used all eight compromised keys to digitally sign his warning message: "We have a problem here – Wayne."

When a user visits a website, their browser checks a digital certificate to confirm the site is real. Companies called certificate authorities issue those certificates, and eMudhra is one of them. It has issued more than 60 million certificates, according to The Register.

Each certificate authority signs its certificates with a private key. Think of it as a master stamp. If someone steals or cracks that stamp, they can forge authentic-looking certificates for any website.

Crypto users should care about this too, mostly outside the browser. Exchange bots, trading scripts and wallet backends often run on Python, Node or Go. A forged certificate for an exchange's API could let an attacker on the same network read or change a bot's traffic. No crypto attacks have been reported, and no attacks on users have been reported so far.

Browser makers and software developers have pushed out emergency fixes. Mozilla got the report just on Oct. m. UTC and had a block in place about three hours later. Chrome blocked the certificates the same day.

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