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Comment by heisenbergs | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered why the zoom app required root permissions, which is why I never installed it in the first place. What would a video conferencing app ever need root permissions for?! Now we know: a backdoor.

Thank god for Apple putting down the law. This is why I happily pay premium prices...

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I can't verify since I don't have it installed but I see no reason why this webserver would need root permissions. If it's asking for root it must be for something else.

Quite a few apps ask for root during installation. But now you have me wondering which apps ask for root and which don't. Would be neat if there was a huge app registry website that could show this. Name and shame the ones that ask for root..

Let me introduce you to the nice folks over at Objective See.. https://objective-see.com/products.html

They have a bunch of cool little apps (that are free) like BlockBlock that let you know when things are happening you wouldn't have otherwise allowed.

For example, BlockBlock warned me randomly about 30 minutes ago about an app that was being silently installed in the background.. something I hadn't seen before called MRT.app.

Turns out - that was Apple silently updating the OS to protect against Zoom. Wouldn't have known if it weren't for these apps.

> Let me introduce you to the nice folks over at Objective See.. https://objective-see.com/products.html

The "nice folks" at Objective-See is Patrick Wardle, a former NSA rootkit expert who would like nothing more than to install various close-sourced components on your computer.

I'm not necessarily a fan of Patrick Wardle, but his software is open source: https://github.com/objective-see/

Some software components are open source, others are not.

That’s funny. Windows’ own tool for these matters is called... MRT.exe

Maybe it stands for Malware Removal Tool on Windows as well.

IIRC "Malicious Software Removal Tool" but close enough I guess.

Wow, neat stuff. Several machines ago, I used to run Little Snitch, but never got past the trial. At some point I searched for free alternatives but didn't find anything. LuLu seems to be very similar, so I'm giving it a try!

Funny how both companies have "objective" in their names.

Dropbox is one. It always prompts me for my password whenever it launches. I always cancel. It works perfectly without it.

They ship a pkg installer package that pretty much always elevates, even if it doesn’t actually need it. While it could in theory install as the user, I don’t even think the Installer app supports this configuration anymore (at least last time I tried I wasn’t able to).

Maybe an improved ability to remain persistent after uninstall, and to reinstall the app?

If it's asking for root it must be for something else.

Occam's Razor, asking for root was probably just the path of least resistance for the Zoom developers.

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