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A comment on Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoom web server. Parent comment

Re:Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoo... by filmgirlcw on Thursday July 11, 2019 @04:40PM (#20415610)
I think when you refuse to address a reported security issue related to something you installed (without the users knowledge and without a way for the user to easily remove) as a way to bypass an access control pop-up, and cite that it’s a feature not a bug, until forced by the public/other disclosures to remove it, The intent is malicious.

But even if it weren’t — and we can agree to disagree on the intent — the second the RCE is popped, it becomes a massive security issue and it becomes traditional malware. As I said, I’m convinced Apple would do the same thing if this was something left behind or associated with Java or Flash.

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Re:Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoo... by fauigerzigerk on Thursday July 11, 2019 @05:05PM (#20415833)
Malicious intent is the only thing that separates malware from a regular security issue. So if we disagree on intent we have to keep disagreeing on whether or not it's malware.

But I will admit that I'm starting to see the question of Zoom's intent a bit differently after thinking about what you have said.

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Re:Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoo... by pvg on Thursday July 11, 2019 @05:26PM (#20416013)
Lying to users about the uninstallation is pretty icky intent. It's weird to make this about the sanctity of user choice and just repeatedly ignore that bit on top of coming up with a throughly inaccurate narrative about the nature of Apple's response.
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Re:Apple has pushed a silent Mac update to remove hidden Zoo... by fauigerzigerk on Thursday July 11, 2019 @06:21PM (#20416425)
I didn't ignore that bit. You didn't bring it up in your responses to me.

Instead you defended Apple fixing security issues in third party software (as I understood it without user consent) and you compared any concerns about that with concerns about buses intentionally running over pedestrians.

So apparently our debate took wrong turn and that wasn't entirely my fault although I will take some of the blame.

I agree that Zoom's intent (and even more so their methods) is icky. So perhaps we should have focused on that, because I can understand the reasoning that this makes Apple's actions look far more justified than I initially thought.

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