Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 277 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#211

Post by kamray23 »

acatton wrote: post #150
xfitm3 wrote: post #136

It not only examines all processes and arguments - it leverages the microphone to act on ultrasonic cues for "integrations". Zoom is a privacy dumpster fire. https://devforum.zoom.us/t/ultrasonic-connection/3318

It also plays your user-name (when configured by the meeting owner) in the background at a non-audible frequency, so that companies can find out who leaked their meetings by analysing the audio from the leak. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/18/leak-zoom-meeting/

Well that's easy enough to defeat if oyu know of it.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#212

Post by ben_bai »

cranekam wrote: post #205
nullc wrote: post #193

How else would they backup your command-line passed passwords and private keys for you?

I assume this is a joke comment because I have never heard of passing a private key (the contents of one, not the file name) as a command line argument. It’d be ten times worse than asking what someone’s wifi password was and being told some 40-digit hex string.

i.e. with 7z (7zip) you have to specify the encode password as a command line argument. jikes

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#214

Post by kamray23 »

the8472 wrote: post #72

> Is there any way to prevent it? Firejail[0] allows cobbling together various linux sandboxing features, including namespaces which should result in an isolated proc filesystem which doesn't see the other processes. But I don't know if the default profile for zoom does that, you have to test it or write your own. [0] https://github.com/netblue30/firejail

AUR has a package for "zoom-firejail" which ships zoom binaries with a ready-made configuration and .desktop for launching it in firejail.

Goes to show how little people trust Zoom.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#215

Post by jcelerier »

dllthomas wrote: post #184
dathinab wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This hints at a very crude way to determine the desktop environment! That is a good discovery. It's probably one of the better ways to detect the running desktop environment as the user might have multiple environments installed and just uses one of them currently, as such looking for installed things doesn't work reliable. And looking for env variables can be unreliable. And scanning the dbug might not be that use…

I mean, in principle the user might be running multiple X servers with different WMs, but that's probably rare enough. I'm also a bit curious what it's actually used for (but not quite curious enough to dig out ghidra, given the other constraints on my time at the moment...)

> I mean, in principle the user might be running multiple X servers with different WMs, but that's probably rare enough

I actually do that all the time. My main "work environment" is TTY0 with i3wm, but when I make nice videos/screencasts, or use Zoom for presentations I often switch to a clean and neat KDE Plasma session on TTY1.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#216

Post by OJFord »

acatton wrote: post #148
dmart wrote: post #129

Perhaps a better question to ask would be "why is any process allowed to do this by default in 2021?"

Because it's a legitimate behaviour. htop needs to do this, it's literally its main feature. You can use hidepid=2 to prevent users from seeing other user's processes list.[1] But I don't want my OS to ask me "do you want to allow htop to access the list of your processes" — à la Windows Vista — every time I want to run htop to see my user processes. The issue here is closed source software with no way to inspect wha…

> But I don't want my OS to ask me "do you want to allow htop to access the list of your processes" — à la Windows Vista — every time I want to run htop to see my user processes.

Why would it be every time? Say yes once to htop, no to Zoom. Sort of like Android/iOS permissions.

Or just require root. No way I'd give it to Zoom, htop maybe.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#217

Post by kamray23 »

monocasa wrote: post #60
miles wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Zoom is malware’: why experts worry about the video conferencing platform https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/zoom-tech... Zoom banned from New York City schools due to privacy and security flaws https://www.fastcompany.com/90486586/zoom-banned-from-new-yo... Google Told Its Workers That They Can’t Use Zoom On Their Laptops Anymore https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/google-bans... Elon M…

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm not sure that last one is zoom's fault. It sounds like Zoom is just calling ShellExecute("open", link), and is getting blamed for the fact that Windows will then connect to random server on public internet and can be convinced to send a hash of the password that can be used to forge a different connection from a different host/client pair with the same credentials.

I mean it is their fault, for a naïve implementation and trusting Windows.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#218

Post by fsflover »

gwbas1c wrote: post #192
MichaelGroves wrote: post #58

> Is there any way to prevent it? Do what I do: Run it on a burner computer connected to your guest network.

Jokes aside, you can probably get close to that by running Zoom in a VM with NAT. Unfortunately, sound and camera tend to be sketchy in a VM.

Works fine for me on Qubes OS.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#219

Post by fsflover »

q-rews wrote: post #209
travoc wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can avoid this reputation by saying “our security analysts block Zoom because they think it might be untrustworthy spyware.”

I resorted to using all modern video call software on my iPhone for that reason. I also get better camera quality so there's that. Apple Handshake also makes it relatively easy to share links.

After Pegasus, I'm not sure it's a secure solution.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Zoom Desktop examine all processes and arguments?

#220

Post by wonnage »

xfitm3 wrote: post #136

It not only examines all processes and arguments - it leverages the microphone to act on ultrasonic cues for "integrations". Zoom is a privacy dumpster fire. https://devforum.zoom.us/t/ultrasonic-connection/3318

Calm your tinfoil hat, this is a common feature in meeting software, has been around forever in Webex https://help.webex.com/en-us/WBX000028256/Troubleshooting-We...
Post reply on HN