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Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

bleepingcomputer.com

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Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#151

Interesting how this will stop me from taking a picture with my mobile phone. The amount of effort people will go to, to make people's work more cumbersome. I am not screenshotting for espionage, I am screenshotting to accomplish my job.

> I am not screenshotting for espionage, I am screenshotting to accomplish my job.

This is literally the threat model that this feature is protecting against: it gives presenters a way to say "no really, when I say don't record I mean don't record". If people end up overusing it at your company, that's a problem to address with them, but I can totally imagine use cases where you would want to turn this on just as an added precaution against accidental but well-intentioned misuse of the visual aids in a private presentation.

This isn't to protect against corporate espionage, it's to give presenters the option to be a little bit more clear about their expectations of confidentiality.

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#152
I guess that if that's optional, including the "Those joining from unsupported platforms will be automatically placed in audio-only mode" part, then why not. I guess it can prevent some accidental leaks, like with someone hitting PrtScr by mistake.

But if someone wants to take a screenshot, the "take a picture with your smartphone" exploit is already very obvious and commonly used, even by non-technical people. I know that confidential information is shared like this all the time, bypassing all security, and everyone turns a blind eye to it, because that's how they get the job done. I fully expect that if that feature is forcibly turned on, people will do it without giving a second thought.

And if you want to do it discreetly, just turn off your camera or cover it.

There are other ways of working around that, like using a video capture card, but why bother when you have a solution so obvious as taking pictures of the screen, even the article mentions it.

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#153
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All these are due to laws and regulations that are there to protect the big companies and don’t take into consideration users This feature is not due to laws and regulations. The user in this case is the presenter who clicks the button to enable screenshot protection on their meeting. This is Microsoft trying to deliver a feature their users want , not laws and regulations making them do something their users don’t…

But it’s literally the dumbest feature ever. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a user from pulling out their phone and taking a picture of any slide they want. Or having a camera recording the whole session out of view of their webcam. It is security theater at its peak.

I’ve been on calls where a presenter explicitly asks that people not screenshot slides shown in the meeting because they’re drafts that will be refined and published or circulated later on. Some companies probably have that as a blanket policy. I’m sure this isn’t universally followed.

This feature would help make that less likely to happen accidentally or “accidentally.” It wouldn’t stop deliberate leaks but that’s a different problem.

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#154
post #131
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s literally the dumbest feature ever. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a user from pulling out their phone and taking a picture of any slide they want. Or having a camera recording the whole session out of view of their webcam. It is security theater at its peak.

In a 1:1 format this would be effective in preventing some forms of misuse because it would be obvious if an individual took out their phone and pointed it towards the screen.

but it is so easy to circumvent, even my teenage daughter, who doesn't have an interest in tech, knows what a capture card is and knows what an hdmi splitter is: she hasn't even entered the workforce yet and she already has all the ingredients needed to circumvent a software block on screenshots

:-D

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#155
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s literally the dumbest feature ever. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a user from pulling out their phone and taking a picture of any slide they want. Or having a camera recording the whole session out of view of their webcam. It is security theater at its peak.

It's not pure security theater, there are a few clear gains for those who care about such things: * Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than a naive photo is. Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took…

> Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here

Like running windows in a VM or using an HDMI capture card. And are they going to break running teams meetings when using moonlight etc. with this? If you are OBS capturing during the meeting does it get blacked out or just breaks your recording?

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#156
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pure security theater, there are a few clear gains for those who care about such things: * Naive screencaps are much less traceable to the leaker than a naive photo is. Yes, someone can strip out EXIF data, but we've seen over and over again that they generally don't. And even without EXIF a naive framing on the photo is more likely to expose information about the location or identity of the person who took…

> Yeah, there are threat models that won't be stopped here Like running windows in a VM or using an HDMI capture card. And are they going to break running teams meetings when using moonlight etc. with this? If you are OBS capturing during the meeting does it get blacked out or just breaks your recording?

You don't need to elaborate on mechanisms for bypassing because you're already imagining a threat actor that is out of scope.

This is primarily about blocking accidental leaks by regular employees who were asked to not record but ignored it. This kind of reuse of content happens all the time in companies of any significant size and isn't entirely stopped by simple requests or watermarks. This tool gives companies one more option to protect against this very lame and boring but also very real threat.

Re: Microsoft Teams will soon block screen capture during meetings

#157

At some point, you need to trust your staff. If you do not trust them to keep confidential information private, then why are you giving them the information in the first place?

People make mistakes. Why not put a simple control in that doesn't get in the way of any legitimate use?

The mistake being, what, accidentally sneezing onto the printscreen button so hard it depresses?

This isn't the same as leaving a tool in someone; making and misplacing a screencap take active doing. If your meeting participants actively want to put data where it doesn't belong, the solution isn't accident prevention

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