Custom Web browser from Comodo poses security threat, researcher says

A customized version of Google’s Chrome browser developed by security vendor Comodo has a jaw-dropping flaw, according to a researcher.

Tavis Ormandy, an information security engineer with Google, analyzed Comodo’s “Chromodo,” a browser based on the Chromium open-source code.

Chromodo is marketed as a browser with enhanced security and privacy controls. But Ormandy found it contains a flaw that violates one of the most basic rules for Web security.

Code that runs on one website shouldn’t be allowed to execute on another since it would pose a great security risk. It’s known as the same origin policy.

For some reason, the same origin policy was disabled in Chromodo, Ormandy wrote in an advisory.

“Chromodo is described as ‘highest levels of speed, security and privacy,’ but actually disables all web security,” he wrote.

Ormandy typically gives companies 90 days to patch a flaw before going public, and he started writing about Chromodo on Jan. 21.

On Tuesday he updated the advisory, saying that it appeared Comodo tried to patch Chromodo against an exploit he developed. But the patch isn’t effective and he planned on filing a fresh bug report.

Comodo officials reached Tuesday didn’t have an immediate comment. The company is one of the largest sellers of SSL/TLS certificates, which encrypt data traffic, and other security products.

On Tuesday, Ormandy wrote on Twitter: “Selling antivirus doesn’t qualify you to fork chromium, you’re going to screw it up.”