The IT Nerd

I guess that Apple felt that the security risks posed by the Zoom video conferencing software and the response by Zoom to fix the issue was too great to ignore as TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has pushed a silent update to remove the Zoom web server that is at the center of this controversy. As in the one that was installed by Zoom without user consent and seems to do some sketchy things.

So you might be wondering how Apple did that. macOS has a feature called XProtect which is part of Apple’s Gatekeeper security suite that is built into macOS. It allows Apple to silently (as in no user interaction is required) deal with malware by pushing updates to any Mac that is online. These updates can quarantine or kill malware. Now to be clear, this isn’t a true antivirus product and you still need to run one despite what the Mac fanboys might say. But this is a good way for Apple to provide “herd immunity” for Mac users.

So the net result is that if you are a Mac based Zoom user and whether you ran the Zoom update or not, you’re protected from this threat. That’s great for Mac users. But given all that has transpired over the last few days, you have to question if you should be using Zoom at all.

This entry was posted on July 11, 2019 at 9:55 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Zoom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.