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Share your screen on Zoom with ultrasound
- Razengan 7y agoZoom is associated with malware in my mind. Is it the same app/service that was infamous on here for a while?
- rgovostes 7y agoYou’re probably thinking of a security vulnerability in their Mac client due to a poor design choice that they were negligent in fixing expediently. Still, I don’t think this classifies the app as malware—the behavior was not added with malicious intent. https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5 https://medium.com/bugbountywriteup/zoom-zero-day-4-million-...
- Razengan 7y agoThat definitely counts as malware. Intent is irrelevant. Same with Google's Keystone and Dropbox storing admin passwords. If you have higher access to my system than you led me to believe, you are malware.
- skinnymuch 7y agoSo Google is associated w/ malware in your mind? And Dropbox? You seemed to be saying Zoom is primarily associated w/ malware for you. If so, you feel the same as the other two brands/companies?
- scarface74 7y agoIf I uninstall Chrome, will it reinstall itself by keeping a daemon running?
- Razengan 7y agoApparently Keystone did/does something like that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- scarface74 7y agoHow is it not malware that after you uninstall software that there is a backdoor that will allow them to reinstall it?
- macrael 7y agoZoom is great. It did have a bad news cycle because they had installed a url handler that let folks initiate meetings with video sharing just by getting them to click a link. That news cycle got that behavior removed and now there's a confirmation screen before you go into a meeting after clicking a link. Zoom has been pretty consistently terrific for us. I'm at a distributed company so we live in it and it's very reliable and makes it easy to see the faces of _everyone_ on the call with you.
- _underfl0w_ 7y agoWasn't there another unrelated MacOS issue where their client was un-uninstallable? It would perpetually install itself. I may be mixing them up with someone else. That might be what the parent was talking about, though, since that's particularly malware-esque.
- antsar 7y agoWhy yes, yes there was. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/apple_removes_zooms_dodgy_hidden_web_server_on_mac/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/apple_removes_zooms...
- ilikepi 7y agoThis is the same issue. The component in question was responsible for the URL handling, and it was also responsible for reinstalling the Zoom client app if it was not present when a link was clicked.
- antsar 7y agoYep, same Zoom. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/apple_removes_zooms_dodgy_hidden_web_server_on_mac/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/11/apple_removes_zooms...
- steego 7y agoI had the same mental association and my first thought looking at this feature was: "What sort of misguided, insecure feature did they come up with this time?" I'm not saying this feature is misguided because I know very little about it, but I am echoing that this too was my first impression however founded or unfounded it may be. I realize that a company like this is stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to balancing growth and convenience and security, but it's very important to understand that when you lose trust by features that seem to be impetuously designed, people are going to start look at new features with suspicion. It might be in Zoom's best interest to put out a write-up that targets IT people and explains the technology a little more in depth for forums like this one. Automagic demos are nice, but we also want to know how the security and other use cases were considered. Gain our trust, and we'll be bigger cheer leaders than your average users.
- Sophistifunk 7y agoYes. It was deliberate and not a bug, the only problem in the company's mind was that they got caught. They have features they wish to deliver, and will exploit any weakness in your system to do so.
- someonehere 7y agoHighly recommend enabling this feature to give cross platform Airplay-like functionality to your Mac and Windows clients.
- aed 7y agoThey've had this feature for sometime and it is pretty cool. :) About a year ago there was an ask HN about conference room systems. I had just recently gone through the process of selecting and went with zoom. The "airplay" feature was one of the reasons why. Here are my notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19455428 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19455428 Edit to add one note: They recently (last six months or so) added a feature to allow you to share multiple screens at once. We've setup most of our conference rooms with two screens so it's really cool when two people in a room can wirelessly share their screens and you're able to see both at once.
- ktpsns 7y agoWow, thank you for the tip with owllabs.com -- that device sounds amazing (while being damned expensive...). Why do you still use another microphones when you have a 800$ webcam (with integrated microphones) in the room?
- aed 7y agoWe only have a couple of rooms where we have the Owl plus another microphone, and those are rooms that are a little bigger than what is suggested for the owl so having the wireless mics help. The owl pro seems to have been an improvement there. We only have one pro right now, but the speaker is much louder and mic a bit better.
- baxtr 7y agoI love zoom, but I don’t get why this is special. I can share my screen already today after I am log into the zoom room. So they made it easier by skipping the login part?
- whalesalad 7y agoThe ultrasonic sound bit is what is cool here.
- marcinzm 7y agoYou can share your screen and then everyone else in the physical room needs to start typing a bunch of characters in to connect to the right zoom room. Which you probably email or slack to them or try to figure out how to connect to the TV. This skips that whole mess and lets them connect automatically.
- cridenour 7y agoBuild your own with: https://github.com/quiet/quiet https://github.com/quiet/quiet
- ptrik 7y agoReminds me of https://chirp.io/technology/ https://chirp.io/technology/
- no_carrier 7y agoCisco have had this feature on their video conferencing stuff for about a decade.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoMaybe they had it, but I'd say whenever I had to use a Cisco web/video conferencing product (or , to be fair, most other web conferencing products), I always felt I was battling someone trying to get everyone connected. With Zoom my experience really was a "it just works" kind of experience.
- joegahona 7y agoExactly! Same with GoToMeeting -- it litters your downloads with files every time you want to have a call. Zoom eliminated that friction, and that's why people are talking about Zoom w/r to this and not Cisco.
- Gonzih 7y agoSo does that mean that software will always have mic on?
- carlosdp 7y agoMaybe, but there's no reason for it to send any audio anywhere while it's parsing ultrasound, so not a privacy problem.
- Gonzih 7y agoUntil software is compromised or simply has a bug that stream audio somewhere.
- RL_Quine 7y agoIn which case it could have just turned on the microphone itself?
- Gonzih 7y agoSoftware that already is listening has more vectors of attack to put it simply. I'm not a fan of features that compromise privacy and security for the sake of convenience.
- RL_Quine 7y agoThat's really nonsensical. Nothing about using an audio input makes code more vulnerable. The interface is always there if the hardware is.
- tinus_hn 7y agoIf software that continuously listens to the microphone is normal this makes it harder to keep track of apps that should not do that.
- gcr 7y agoThe presentation implies that you have to click the "share screen" button before your computer will try to detect the ultrasound signal.
- aaron695 7y ago> Share your screen on Zoom with ultrasound So this is misleading? It just uses ultrasonic to connect? So is just sending a very small amount of data? It uses the fact ultrasound can't break through walls to define a space? You could do exactly the same with Bluetooth or Wireless but you might pickup next door?
- swsieber 7y agoAnd dropbox just lets you sync files to a remote server.
- taway555 7y agoI still don't know why DropBox is a thing. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
- gsdatta 7y agoI think you just answered your own question - that sounds quite painful for me to maintain and I'd rather pay Dropbox for the time they save me. + all the added benefits of features they can build with a dedicated organization improving this workflow.
- imron 7y agoParent is making a joke. See the top reply on the Dropbox launch thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- aaron695 7y ago> And dropbox just lets you sync files to a remote server. Whats the point? Zoom does NOT allow you to share a screen using ultrasonic. This is a lie. It sends a code like ZOOM-453FHREF then you use this to connect to a server and share a screen using the internet I guess. There is simply not the bandwidth using this technology on current common hardware to share screens. I don't understand what you are you claiming, Dropbox doesn't sync files with a server? It at a base level it does that. That's not a lie. Sending such a small code can be done many ways, as they mention visually to human eyes. What is interesting is these two methods, ultrasonic and light can't penetrate walls. What they are doing is defining spaces using technology that can't penetrate walls, this is why it's interesting.
- bobbiechen 7y agoAlthough this is ultrasound it's still audible to me - I'd guesstimate it around 22-23 kHz. It's in that range where you almost feel it rather than hearing it, like the whine off some CRTs. I'm sure I'm a rare case, even most of the other people my age (early 20s) don't hear it unless they're right up against the speaker, but it sure is annoying for me.
- phire 7y agoCRTs are 15.6 khz. Nowhere near 20kHz
- Hello71 7y agowhile it's technically possible to hear above 20 kHz, outside of a laboratory it's far more likely that you're hearing intermodulation distortion, or simply background noise: at least on Linux, the audio output can be disabled completely when not in use. therefore, there is background noise only when the audio output is activated.
- Igelau 7y agoI'm not sure I get what your saying. Are you asserting that GP is confused about what they are hearing, or are you saying that the ultrasound is creating some kind of unpleasant interference that is being perceived instead? I've been able to hear in unusually high ranges my whole life into my mid-30s. Office, home, urban environments... distance measuring equipment, devices intended to repel birds and mosquitoes... things that are loud but "too high to hear" that wind up for me being "yes, that is indeed very loud and very high".
- solresol 7y agoBeing relatively young and having a childhood history of asthma could get them hearing a little higher than 20 khZ as well, so it's not out of the question that they are hearing the sound itself. But the most likely thing is that they are hearing some sort of undertone or artifact created in the process of the signal generation.
- 7y ago
- CameronBanga 7y agoCrazy, I thought I deleted Zoom months ago but somehow I already have this update. What great news!
- Razengan 7y agoThis sounds alarming: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22351190 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22351190 (Zoom resisting uninstalls)
- flashman 7y agoZoom is integrated into our Outlook calendars (and pretty well, I might add), so I assumed the Share Screen function looked at my calendar, saw which room I was scheduled to be in, and shared my desktop to the corresponding screen. I suppose doing it with ultrasound is a little simpler, and avoids problems if we have to duck into a different room due to a schedule conflict.
- scarface74 7y agoInstall Zoom on my computer? I’ll take a hard pass. https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-server-on-macs-after-security-report/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-...
- bradknowles 7y agoYet another thing to kill with Chlorine Trifluoride. Large quantities.
- maury91 7y agoIs it already the 1st of April?