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Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

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Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#131

Post by doublerabbit »

sverhagen wrote: post #65
rascul wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jitsi is an excellent free and open source alternative.

And that is useless if you have meetings with people that "have standardized" on Zoom, and that hold some sort of leverage over you, like clients/customers.

I found Clients / Customers don't care, I just send them a meetings link and they find themselves shocked in that it just works.

If they moan say it's Zoom but the corporate version.

Self-hosting my own Jitsi and it's faultless and the way to go.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#132

Post by roryirvine »

wolfi1 wrote: post #105
bmacho wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They've lost my trust since then, and I'll only run it sandboxed: https://gist.github.com/cielavenir/02f322e322a2a3555dbf2b38f ... On Linux/X11 even when you run a program sandboxed or as a different user if you use a master Xserver the sandboxed program still can listen and modify all your input/output including keyboard/mouse events and window content of every application.

could xhost(1) help here?

Not really - it's not sufficiently fine-grained and, besides, you need it to connect to X to display anything.

There were various attempts to improve this situation in the early 2010s, typically using Xnest or Xephyr in conjunction with other sandboxing techniques. I believe Qubes OS followed that approach but it was awkward, limited, had major performance problems, and yet never managed to fully prevent circumvention.

The fact is that the X model was never designed with these threats in mind.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#133

Post by samus »

amelius wrote: post #106
drnick1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux generally presumes that you run trusted software, not some proprietary program that is approximately malware. If you want a "sandbox" run that program as a separate unprivileged user or use bubblewrap.

> Linux generally presumes that you run trusted software, not some proprietary program that is approximately malware. But this statement basically says: "Linux has no good permission controls for running software". The assumption is flawed. Trusting software is not a true/false thing. Yes, you can use sandboxing tools, but how many people use them properly? How many usability bugs do they still have?

Unix systems were initially designed to be multi-user systems (as in multiple meatbags accessing a mainframe across terminals), in an era before it was common to indiscriminately download and run applications from the internet. Files required explicit opt-in to become executable. There were always attempts at mischief, but it was deemed sufficient to separate user account from each other and denying direct access to the hardware so an account compromise wouldn't escalate to the rest of the system.

Because of this heritage Android uses user accounts instead of namespaces a.k.a. containers (a much newer and less mature concept) to isolate apps from each other.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#134

Post by kd913 »

samus wrote: post #122
Lucasoato wrote: post #115

I wish most Linux distributions had something like a standardized permission manager in which you enable the single policies apps are running with, similarly to what happens in Android (that has some Linux stuff under the hood). How hard would it be to have something like this? And I can’t even imagine the difficulty of gathering together the whole community around this standard...

Quite hard because on Linux there is no concept of "apps". There is a (very flimsy) separation between processes, but the strongest actual security boundaries are between kernel and user space as well as between users. Namespaces are explicitly not acknowledged as such, which limits the security guarantees that containers can provide. Snaps and Flatpak are steps towards that goal, but there are many issues surroundin…

Snaps are a lot lot better in this regard especially in the perspective of connections.

You can define connections to home, camera, network etc...

I have not seen the same in flatpak.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#135

Post by samus »

superkuh wrote: post #52
ryandrake wrote: post #50

The "clipboard" as it is implemented in many (most?) operating systems today, only exists because it's a legacy idea that hasn't died. If it were freshly invented today, it would never get past even the most lenient privacy review. Think about the pitch for the feature: "So, we're going to make this in the OS, where the user can highlight anything in any application, invoke a command, and then that thing (which could…

No. You're assuming that you don't have control of your own computer. Think about the pitch for removing the feature, "So, we're going to make this in the OS, where visually disabled users cannot highlight anything in any application, can't move text between applications, cannot get the window title, cannot get the window tree, cannot have applications automate or know where other applications are, and basically they…

Accessibility apps naturally require privileged access to other applications. Using the clipboard for accessibility is a hack though, as its intended purpose is occasional generalized data transfer. Also, Zoom isn't an accessibility app in the first place, and all capabilities it needs should be opt-in.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#136

Post by lxgr »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #120
lxgr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, in a way SIP is bigger than ever with NGNs, and there’s SIP use beyond that too, but actual interoperable SIP (as in, I can dial sip:name@example.com) is effectively not a thing anymore.

I don’t deal with corporate telephony but our sip accounts on the broadcast side have all manner of endpoints, including software and hardware from many different manufacturers. We land them on a pair of paired oracle sbcs which somehow (I’m not close to the details on this part) shares account detail and sessions between the two geographically resilient locations. You just need the dns, account and password.

I do believe that vendor-interoperable SIP exists today, but I also know that I can't call >99.9..9% of the people in the world via SIP, and 100% of the ones I practically do call.

This is a very different story from e.g. email – even though most people I communicate with use either Gmail or some hosted Outlook service, I don't have to on my side (with some limitations around deliverability etc. lately).

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#137

Post by c-hendricks »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #64
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest why do you still use the app and not just use it in the browser? I feel much more secure having it in the browser sandbox and everything I care about works in the browser.

Not parent, but the web player used to be a down-graded experience from the native app. If you need Zoom for a professional setting, those functions could be important. Do not know if this is still true, but at one point, the web player would only let you see one speaker at a time, while the app would show multiple people at once.

I've been using the web client for over a year and that hasn't been the case the whole time, gallery view is an option.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#138

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

sverhagen wrote: post #65
rascul wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jitsi is an excellent free and open source alternative.

And that is useless if you have meetings with people that "have standardized" on Zoom, and that hold some sort of leverage over you, like clients/customers.

Just send a meeting link and it works in any browser.

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#139

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

bix6 wrote: post #14
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinning up a conference host for a small office is fairly trivial =3 https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Ah yes Jitsi! I have been invited to meet on Jitsi 0 times.

https://meet.jit.si/humanphilosophersdisplaceround

first time for everything

Re: Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard

#140

Post by vyskocilm »

kd913 wrote: post #134
samus wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite hard because on Linux there is no concept of "apps". There is a (very flimsy) separation between processes, but the strongest actual security boundaries are between kernel and user space as well as between users. Namespaces are explicitly not acknowledged as such, which limits the security guarantees that containers can provide. Snaps and Flatpak are steps towards that goal, but there are many issues surroundin…

Snaps are a lot lot better in this regard especially in the perspective of connections. You can define connections to home, camera, network etc... I have not seen the same in flatpak.

Sure flatpak have a static permission system too, even it is not recommended and xdg portals are the way of integrating with a host.

https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.github.tchx84.Flatseal

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