Opera found a significant security flaw that could have allowed hackers to run any file they want – but it says everything is now fine
UPDATE: Opera has published a response to the reports, claiming that the flaw is no longer active and has been addressed.
“There is no evidence that the vulnerability was ever exploited, and Opera users’ security was never compromised as a result,” it said. “It’s also important to note that, as mentioned above, the vulnerability would require the installation of a malicious add-on in order to work. This would be very hard to accomplish on Opera, because we employ manual review in our add-ons store – another measure we take to protect users.”
“This vulnerability, which no longer exists, was identified as part of a collaboration with security researchers Guardio Labs, and was subsequently fixed within only five days – as such, Opera users are not at risk.”
Opera, a popular Chromium-based browser, was found carrying a vulnerability that would allow hackers to install pretty much any file on both Windows and macOS operating systems.
The vulnerability was discovered by cybersecurity researchers from Guardio Labs, who notified the browser’s developers and helped it plug the hole.
In its technical writeup, Guardio Labs explained that the flaw stemmed from a feature built into the browser, called My Flow. This is a feature built on a browser extension called Opera Touch Background, which comes preinstalled with the browser and technically can’t be removed.
Abusing a landing page
My Flow allows users to take notes and share files between the desktop and mobile versions of the browser. There is a trend among software developers to allow users a seamless transition between desktop and mobile solutions for both work and play. In this case, however, the feature came at the cost of security.
“The chat-like interface adds an “OPEN” link to any message with an attached file, allowing users to immediately execute the file from the web interface,” the researchers explain. “This indicates that the webpage context can somehow interact with a system API and execute a file from the file system, outside the browser’s usual confines, with no sandbox, no limits.”
The second important factor is the fact that specific, other web pages, as well as extensions, can connect to My Flow. When…
