Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in Comodo Antivirus, including one that allows an attacker to escape the sandbox and escalate privileges, and the vendor does not appear to have released any patches.
David Wells, a researcher at Tenable, uncovered five types of flaws in Comodo Antivirus and Comodo Antivirus Advanced. Four of the issues were identified in version 12.0.0.6810 and one denial-of-service (DoS) bug only impacts version 11.0.0.6582.
The most serious of the vulnerabilities, with a CVSS score of 6.8, is CVE-2019-3969, which allows an attacker with access to the targeted system to escape the Comodo Antivirus sandbox and escalate privileges to SYSTEM.
Another flaw discovered by Wells, CVE-2019-3970, has been described as an arbitrary file write issue that allows an attacker to modify virus definitions. This can be leveraged to create false positives or help malware bypass signature-based detection.
The other three vulnerabilities can be exploited to cause application components and the kernel to crash.
It’s worth noting that exploiting each of these vulnerabilities requires access to the targeted system. Based on their CVSS score, all of the security holes have been classified as “medium” or “low” severity.
Wells has published a blog post detailing the sandbox escape/privilege escalation vulnerability. Proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code and a video showing the exploit in action have also been made available.
Tenable said it reported its findings to Comodo in mid-April, but no patches appear to have been released and the vendor has not provided any information to Tenable on when it plans to release fixes. Comodo said the privilege escalation vulnerability was partly Microsoft’s fault, but failed to elaborate.
SecurityWeek has reached out to Comodo for comment and will update this article if the company responds.
UPDATE. Comodo has provided SecurityWeek the following statement:
There have been no reported incidents exploiting any of these vulnerabilities and no customers reporting related issues to us. The Comodo product team has been working diligently to resolve all vulnerabilities and all fixes will be released by Monday, July 29.
Related: BlackBerry Cylance Downplays, Patches Antivirus Bypass
Related: Remote Code Execution Flaw Found in Kaspersky Products
Related: Comodo Browser Breaks Security, Says Google Researcher
Related: Comodo Support Tool Allowed Attackers to Elevate Privileges

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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