Ruthenium: Custom Chromium Build for Android Adds Russian Trusted Root CA Support
A developer has released Ruthenium, a modified Chromium browser for Android that embeds the Russian Trusted Root CA certificate issued by the Ministry of Digital Development. The build restricts trust to .ru and .рф domains only, avoiding changes to the system-wide Android certificate store. The project patches four Chromium source files to include the root with DNS constraints via CertWithConstraints, disables Google sign-in by default, and removes XR-related code for successful compilation. Ruthenium uses the official Chromium TLS verification logic without introducing a custom verifier. The APK is distributed with SHA-256 checksums, build metadata, and reproducible release tags tied to the exact Chromium revision and certificate digest. Users can install it alongside stock Chrome and use it selectively for Russian government and banking sites that rely on the state root.
Habr•Policy & Regulation
