Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server

Post by lonelappde » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #133

taftster wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is completely frustrating, because Mac is totally in the position of using its built-in capabilities to deal with this. The Mac Bundle (.app) format could solve this entirely. All application specific data should be written inside of the bundle folder, so that when you delete the app, you delete the thing entirely. I mean, maybe you need a "user data" bundle of sorts tied to the specific application. If you del…

> The default installer and bundle runners should be controlling the process. "XYZ App is attempting to write data files outside of its bundle location. These may not be cleaned up if you delete the application. Do you want to continue?" If you do that, the entire system stops working. Everyone will just click "ok" and then still gets mad when uninstalling doesn't fully clean things up.

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #122

rrix2 wrote: post #103

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It bothers me that people weren't more upset about this part.

I’m sure Apple is as upset as anyone else. It effectively breaks their sandbox model so they’ll probably be working hard on a way to plug that hole gracefully.

Post by erikpukinskis » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #158

erikpukinskis wrote: post #136

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No. You can bend your business model towards transactions you are comfortable with, without perfect future vision, or even a clear strategic understanding of how that might happen. In fact, the world around you will bend to meet your values whether you’re even aware of it. And that includes any companies you run. The world does extend beyond your knowledge of it.

The same forces that require several levels of management make it increasingly difficult to enforce ethical decisions. Basically, when no one person can keep track of all the moving pieces you get splits around what individuals think is acceptable behavior. The larger organizations grows the more things tend to diverge, with different branches often having wildly different perspectives. This tends to further degrade…

Post by spsful » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:39 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #159

Deimorz wrote: post #69

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I don't think disabling the enterprise certs was particularly moral, Facebook and Google were flagrantly violating the terms of the enterprise program. Apple also apparently didn't even notice (or didn't care) until articles about it started getting a lot of attention. Apple definitely does make some commendable decisions, but I think it's also important to distinguish between bravery and what Ben Thompson calls "Str…

> Apple also apparently didn't even notice Do they have any information about enterprise apps? As I understand it, Apple never phones home with app info (such as the identifier, name, etc) when verifying or installing enterprise-signed apps, so the only thing they know is probably the IP address requesting to verify the enterprise-signed app and the frequency of how often Apple devices do this certificate verificatio…

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 1:39 AM UTC

cush wrote: post #171

userbinator wrote: post #110

It's been rather disturbing to see this whole thing play out --- I'm not taking sides here, but Apple "flexing its arms" in this manner shows that it is willing and has the power to go beyond policing its App Store and such (which while I do not like, I feel it does have the right to) and involve itself in the affairs of third-party software which it did not originally install. (This is subtly different from updating…

They worked with Zoom to kill the zombie servers which were left behind after Zoom is uninstalled. Not really flexing. Zoom accidentally created malware, and Apple killed it using the same mechanisms they would to kill other malware.