By The Hacker News
Publication Date: 2026-03-02 16:52:00
Google has announced a new program in its Chrome browser to ensure that HTTPS certificates are secure against the future risk posed by quantum computers.
“To ensure the scalability and efficiency of the ecosystem, Chrome has no immediate plan to add traditional X.509 certificates containing post-quantum cryptography to the Chrome Root Store,” the Chrome Secure Web and Networking Team said.
“Instead, Chrome, in collaboration with other partners, is developing an evolution of HTTPS certificates based on Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs), currently in development in the PLANTS working group.”
As Cloudflare explains, MTC is a proposal for the next generation of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used to secure the internet that aims to reduce the number of public keys and signatures in the TLS handshake to the bare minimum required.
Under this model, a Certification Authority (CA) signs a single ‘Tree Head’ representing…
