Comodo up to more tricks

People occasionally ask me who they should buy security certificates from. I absolutely will not recommend anyone in particular – even the most honest and honorable Certificate Authorities are inherently swindlers, because the trade itself is pretty much a legalized extortion scheme – but I am willing to say who I don’t recommend – Comodo is the worst CA, hands down. Witness their latest hijinks:

When you install Comodo Internet Security, by default a new browser called Chromodo is installed and set as the default browser. Additionally, all shortcuts are replaced with Chromodo links and all settings, cookies, etc are imported from Chrome. They also hijack DNS settings, among other shady practices.
[Link to Chromodo download elided]
Chromodo is described as “highest levels of speed, security and privacy”, but actually disables all web security. Let me repeat that, they ***disable the same origin policy***…. ?!?..

This certainly isn’t the first time Comodo’s been caught doing things they shouldn’t, but somehow they still control around a third of the world’s certificate issuance. People need to stop giving business to known bad actors, even when it’s unclear whether the actions stem from malice or incompetence.

Chained libraries

Bruce Schneier‘s crypto-gram linked this, which in turn links some great images of medieval chained libraries.

Hereford chained library, courtesy MedievalFragments blog

James Mickens in Norway

“In this bleak, relentlessly morbid talk, James Mickens will describe why making computers secure is an intrinsically impossible task. He will explain why no programming language makes it easy to write secure code. He will then discuss why cloud computing is a black hole for privacy, and only useful for people who want to fill your machine with ads, viruses, or viruses that masquerade as ads. At this point in the talk, an audience member may suggest that Bitcoins can make things better. Mickens will laugh at this audience member and then explain why trusting the Bitcoin infrastructure is like asking Dracula to become a vegan. Mickens will conclude by describing why true love is a joke and why we are all destined to die alone and tormented. The first ten attendees will get balloon animals, and/or an unconvincing explanation about why Mickens intended to (but did not) bring balloon animals. Mickens will then flee on horseback while shouting ‘The Prince of Lies escapes again!'”

https://vimeo.com/135347162

Android 5.0 is out

It’s got better support for filesystems and for SD cards, despite Google’s claim that file managers and removable storage are simply too confusing and difficult for their user base. Google’s been flooded with complaints about their rejection of SD cards (and Android tablets like the nVidia Shield that support SD cards are massively outselling Google’s offerings) so perhaps calling their customers clueless wasn’t such a great business move. I haven’t heard anything about the app permissions debacle, so I’m assuming that’s still horribly broken.