Zoom, one of the world leaders in video conferencing and collaboration devices, has accomplished incredible things this year. In April this year, the company became the most valuable technology IPO of 2019, identifying it as a "UC Unicorn" with some serious potential.
However, being a successful UC business doesn't necessarily mean that you're invulnerable to problems. Slack, one of the original collaboration companies, proved this fact themselves at the end of June 2019, when their app experienced a worldwide outage for more than an hour.
Now, it seems like Zoom has also been the victim of a severe issue with their video-conferencing software. According to Jonathan Leitschuh, a technology veteran that discovered a bug affecting the cameras on millions of Apple Macs, the latest vulnerability in the Zoom software was "bananas," and may have left countless people at risk.
The Zoom Video Vulnerability
According to Jonathan's report, hackers may have been able to access the cameras on Apple Macs thanks to a vulnerability in Zoom's software for video conferencing. Jonathan Leitschuh said that the problem is related to the way that Zoom establishes video meetings in Mac hardware. This generally involves someone sending a unique link to someone over the web, which they can click to join a meeting.
On the one hand, this simple access to video meetings is an excellent feature for Zoom users who don't want to deal with complexity before their voice calls. However, the Zoom Mac software also makes joining meetings easier by placing a web server on every machine it gets installed on. This is where the vulnerability lies.
While not all Macs were necessarily vulnerable to the issue, those who failed to change a setting that turned video off when they joined a meeting were at risk. The flaw allowed hackers to place code on websites that connected to the server when victims clicked their meeting links - leading to serious privacy issues.
The same problem isn't apparent on Windows computers, because they handle Zoom meetings differently - without the server installation.
Fixing the Zoom Server Issue
According to reports about the Zoom functionality issue, simply uninstalling Zoom from your Mac might not have been enough to correct the problem. Uninstalling zoom could allow the web server to remain on your device, which means that the vulnerability is still there.
If you've previously installed the Zoom client, and then uninstall the software, you'll still have the localhost web server on your device that re-installs the client on your behalf when necessary, without any interaction on your behalf. All you need to do to start the installation is visit the right web-page.
