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

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

#161

Post by bowmessage »

vishho wrote: post #158

Zoom has attention tracking, which when enabled silently, shows an admin if the screen is maximized or if the user is focused on other applications. They don't yet tell admins what other apps the user is active in, just whether the user is active. Another angle for Zoom to do that, is that it is a massive Chinese spyware application, which can target users by meta data or IP, like it did by messing with the calls of…

Oh, yuck, I didn't know this was a thing but it looks like it has since been removed:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000538083-Atten...

> As of April 2, 2020, we have removed the attendee attention tracker feature as part of our commitment to the security and privacy of our customers. For more background on this change and how we are pivoting during these unprecedented times, please see a note from our CEO, Eric S. Yuan.

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

#162

Post by dathinab »

woodruffw wrote: post #70
cranekam wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing in /proc/PID/cmdline etc that would definitely confirm an app has a GUI. The two concepts are at very different layers of the stack — to the OS the GUI is just another app on top of the kernel. Mayyyyyybe Zoom could be doing some crude pattern matching on process name or environment variables of a given process (though it’d only be able to read data of processes running as the same user) but it’s a lo…

This is an unlikely stretch, but it looks like they're also attempting to read `/proc/PID/exe` -- they could be doing something (extremely) cursed like attempting to parse the program linkages and filtering by programs that link to `libX11`. But that's me straining to explain this in the context of the GP's hypothesis.

Why would you implement such a overly complex and unreliable thing when:

1. The windows manager can provide you with a list of open windows.

2. Screensharing including only sharing specific windows is a feature provided by the windows manager over standardized protocols.

3. Even knowing the processes which do have a GUI doesn't allow you to share that GUI, at least not without going through roughly the same mechanisms as mentioned in 2nd.

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

#163

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

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/

I thought this thread was full of sarcasm and then I see the links.

I should have known better.

I am glad this is getting posted because we need reminders of the reality we live in

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

#164

Post by ineedasername »

reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Zoom has a popular feature which allows for screen sharing a single application window instead of the entire desktop. I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. Perhaps there is a better API for this? Its not a common use-case that an app would need to know all of the other open windows, but it seems like a perfectly valid use case, and frankly handy fo…

Reminds me a bit of how platforms like Citrix will publish single applications. Considering you can give control to another user with Zoom I suppose it's a lot like that, although I know the underlying tech is very different.

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

#165

Post by ineedasername »

twic wrote: post #92
reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Zoom has a popular feature which allows for screen sharing a single application window instead of the entire desktop. I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. Perhaps there is a better API for this? Its not a common use-case that an app would need to know all of the other open windows, but it seems like a perfectly valid use case, and frankly handy fo…

I run Zoom from flatpak, which runs it in a container, and sandboxes it to some extent [1] This probably explains why, when i try to screenshare a single application window, not every application shows up! I can share my browser, file manager, and various other things, but not windows for games started by Steam. [1] I followed these instructions https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/zoom-flatpak-sandboxing/

Games always seem impacted in odd ways by remote desktop protocols. One game might run fine, while another is just a black screen, or an uncontrollable mouse.

It makes me wonder how Things like Steam streaming and Paperspace get around the issue.

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

#166

Post by birksherty »

reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Zoom has a popular feature which allows for screen sharing a single application window instead of the entire desktop. I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. Perhaps there is a better API for this? Its not a common use-case that an app would need to know all of the other open windows, but it seems like a perfectly valid use case, and frankly handy fo…

Google meet running in a browser can share any application specific windows. Not sure if it also does the same thing though.

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

#167

Post by dathinab »

woodruffw wrote: post #66
reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Zoom has a popular feature which allows for screen sharing a single application window instead of the entire desktop. I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. Perhaps there is a better API for this? Its not a common use-case that an app would need to know all of the other open windows, but it seems like a perfectly valid use case, and frankly handy fo…

Based on OP's snippet they're probably doing this on Linux. Assuming the presence of X11 and an EWMH-compatible window manager, they could query X11 directly and ask the root window for its `_NET_CLIENT_LIST` attribute. That, in turn, would list every "semantic" (i.e., non-decorative) window currently open on the current display. But that doesn't work for non-X11 or if the WM is non-EWMH compliant. Presumably Wayland…

> Presumably Wayland ...

Yes there is a wayland extension for screen sharing and also support for sharing just one application.

It provides screen sharing on KDE, Gnome and most wlroots based WMs.

Through wlroots doesn't yet (or maybe does by now) support sharing a specific window I think, but this mean it doesn't support sharing a specific window and knowing which process belongs to a window doesn't really help you there either...

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

#168

Post by orangea »

P9TXJYG0TENG wrote: post #91
andrewlevi wrote: post #75

Does Teams or Discord do anything similar?

Discord does. It makes some sense, since Discord has a feature to broadcast what game you're currently playing (or anything you want), but I found it was scanning /proc even when I turned this off. I didn't like that, and I spent a lot of time and effort working out various ways to keep it out of /proc (or anywhere else while I was at it- mostly with AppArmor) and ultimately ended up running it in a container with sy…

Wouldn't it be easier to just run it in a browser?

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

#169

Post by user5994461 »

kelnos wrote: post #96
reilly3000 wrote: post #50

Zoom has a popular feature which allows for screen sharing a single application window instead of the entire desktop. I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. Perhaps there is a better API for this? Its not a common use-case that an app would need to know all of the other open windows, but it seems like a perfectly valid use case, and frankly handy fo…

> I assume this is how its discovering running applications with GUI windows open in a cross-platform manner. That's definitely not a cross-platform way of doing it (and I doubt there is one, even). On Linux you'd use libX11 and just enumerate all windows (using XQueryTree()). Walking the contents of /proc is not only unnecessary, but is more difficult to do, as looking at executable names won't tell you if a program…

Windows has a function EnumWindows() to do just that.

If you say that there's an similar API on Linux for X11, then that's the same methodology across platforms.

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

#170

Post by P9TXJYG0TENG »

orangea wrote: post #168
P9TXJYG0TENG wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord does. It makes some sense, since Discord has a feature to broadcast what game you're currently playing (or anything you want), but I found it was scanning /proc even when I turned this off. I didn't like that, and I spent a lot of time and effort working out various ways to keep it out of /proc (or anywhere else while I was at it- mostly with AppArmor) and ultimately ended up running it in a container with sy…

Wouldn't it be easier to just run it in a browser?

That's probably the better answer, yeah. I think there's a couple of features that don't work very well in the browser (push to talk?), but the actual answer is that it probably simply didn't occur to me at the time.

I use both these days.

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