Major web browsers moved Wednesday to stop using a mysterious software company that certified websites were secure, three weeks after The Washington Post reported its connections to a U.S. military contractor.“Certificate Authorities have highly trusted roles in the internet ecosystem and it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware,” Mozilla’s Kathleen Wilson wrote to a mailing list for browser security experts.“Trustcor’s responses via their Vice President of CA operations further substantiates the factual basis for Mozilla’s concerns.”The Post reported on Nov. 8 that TrustCor’s Panamanian registration records showed the same slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware-maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade.In announcing Mozilla’s decision, Wilson cited the past overlaps in officers and operations between TrustCor and MsgSafe and between TrustCor and Measurement Systems, a Panamanian spyware company with previously reported ties to Packet Forensics.Reardon and Egelman earlier this year found that Packet Forensics was connected to the Panamanian company Measurement Systems, which paid software developers to include code in a variety of apps to record and transmit users’ phone numbers, email addresses and exact locations."