How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

gentleman11 wrote: post #204

jwr wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. I'm also curious. I subscribed to Whereby ( https://whereby.com/ ), where I can send people a URL, which they click and land in my conference room. There is ZERO software they need to install. [For all the "well, actually" folks: yes, it "only" works in every modern browser out there, and it works "only" for up to 12 people. Fine with me.]…

To be more specific, whereby seems to be free for up to 4 people, but then they claim to be able to support 50. Never tested it with 50

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:30 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #260

thaumasiotes wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) Malware is defined by what it does, not how it's installed. Well, from the tweet thread: > If the App is already installed but the current user is not admin, they use a helper tool called "zoomAutenticationTool" [sic] and the AuthorizationExecuteWithPrivileges API to spawn a password prompt identifying as "System" (!!) to gain root (including a typo).

It's not malicious, and you have to give it permissions somehow to finish the install. Dropbox (used to?) patch system files to integrate with Office better, and that wasn't considered malware either.

Post by hr2016 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #232

tambourine_man wrote: post #173

Zoom's got a tradition of being, let's put it like this, way too clever for everyone's own good. See previous “lets install a server on this Mac that is not removed when you uninstall the app and leaves your camera open to the entire internet” for more examples. I use it on a VM, I suggest you do it too.

It's very Dropbox-esque…

Post by AngeloAnolin » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

Post by zuppy » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #65

zuppy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they work for your use case. hangouts can’t handle many users (is it 10 the limit?), which is a deal breaker for me. we’ve tried and people couldn’t join the call. if by microsoft you mean teams, i’m not aware of it working without accounts (not an issue for google as most people have google accounts).

> hangouts can’t handle many users (is it 10 the limit?), which is a deal breaker for me. we’ve tried and people couldn’t join the call. My company had a 17 person Hangouts (Meet) meeting on Monday. Actually, we switched to Hangouts from Slack because Slack has a 15 person limit. Is the limit maybe different for "Hangouts" vs Hangouts Meet?