Optrics Insider - Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update& Online Meeting Etiquette

Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Optrics Insider Shaun Sturby & Scott Young

Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Scott: This is Scott Young from Optrics Engineering. With me, of course, I've got, Shaun Sturby, who is our Manager of Technical Services, and we're going to do another Optrics Insider. Shaun's going to tell us what he's been hearing this week, that's important for you guys to know, and we'll start with Apple Mail iOS bug.

Shaun: Yeah. So it was released recently that, the Apple Mail app on iOS starting, quite a few versions ago has a bug. So over the past two years, it's been exploited as a zero day to get access to certain people's iOS devices. So that's a very interesting one because I know there's a lot of people, especially the artistic and marketing people, that really like the ease of use of an iOS device or an Apple device. So Apple has to come out with an update and a fix, and I've seen some Twitter requests, from the people who discovered this bug, that Apple has to become a little more transparent with their updates and what is and what isn't included. They've been historically very closed, office or closed walls. "We've fixed some things" is the limit of the detail that don't really say what they fixed.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Scott: Interesting and how about Zoom? Zoom is obviously a very popular platform where it actually, that's what we're using right now to do this Optrics Insider. Version five has a update there as well, what should people know about that?

Shaun: I've updated to version five today this morning. Zoom has gotten a lot of heat over the last couple of weeks that they didn't have a lot of features around or were maybe a little inventive in their way of describing some of their features. I switched to it this morning and ran through some of the settings and definitely they are very forward now that it is using proper AES 256 bit encryption. They've actually got icons all over it.

There's a security icon and an information icon that you can click on. I don't have a screenshot of it, but it says, you know, here it is, here's your meeting ID and tells me that I'm connected to a global data center in the United States. So our data is not going through China. Then with the other security icon, which is right down along where are all of the other chat and share screen and stop and start are, it has a report that pops up and tells me all about the encryption of the various different aspects of video and screen sharing. So that's great. Shows all sorts of additional tools so I can lock a meeting. We've been using tools like GoToMeeting, Zoom and Google Hangouts for years, and we've never experienced a "Zoom bombing" or somebody breaking into a call that shouldn't have, but it's always a possibility.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Scott: I was going to actually ask what does the extra 256 bit encryption really provide to somebody using it and what's the likelihood that a third-party is recording the meeting?

Should people really consider this because it's running in the cloud? How much confidentiality or privacy should people expect?

Shaun: It's a cloud service, unless you completely host it yourself internally or are in charge of all of the encryption keys and all of the encryption certificates there's a possibility that somebody can intercept it. So the previous encryption standard that they used was not really end-to-end encryption, but even now, there is an option to record to the cloud, and then you can get a link and you just fire off that link and somebody can view it without needing any sort of a decryption key. So the encryption is within the meeting. If somebody was to say, our ISP, saw the Zoom video meeting they can tell that because it's off to the Zoom cloud. They could do a packet capture on that traffic and because it's properly AES 256 bit encrypted at this point, all they would know is that there's a bunch of data going back and forth, as well as the source and the destination.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

So if they were my ISP, all they would see is that I'm connecting to Zoom. They wouldn't see who else is on the Zoom meeting, unless that information is somehow established within the Zoom app and is in the clear, that's what the encryption is supposed to hide.

But the actual recording of the meeting, if I saved it to the cloud, instead of locally, well, that's going to have to be recorded in the clear, without any encryption. If I send somebody a link to it, they're going to be able to download it, using the same encryption that we use for our banking websites, but it still, it's not going to end up encrypted on their desktop. It's just going to be the encryption in transport.

Scott: So when it goes to recording, then I would say that if you're going to record it, as the user you are going to know the contents of whatever the discussion is. If you're going to record it, personally I'd say download it locally so that you have it versus recording it to the cloud. It comes down to control. I'm assuming that's what you would recommend as well?

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Shaun: Correct Yes.

Scott: Okay. Excellent. Since we're talking about online meetings, you have some etiquette and tips you'd like to share.

Shaun: Yeah. So since we are doing so many things online and we even are doing it here within our own organization, or we are all working from home. Our staff meetings and our regular update meetings are all done via this, as well as all of our demos. Some things I just wanted to point out: you can join ďŹ ve minutes early, be available, make sure that you've tested things so that your audio is going to be nice and clear, and that there's nothing distracting behind you. Audio is more important than video. Well, video is very nice to be able to see the expression of the person that you're talking to and for that initial greeting and saying "Hi" it's great. But if you were in a bandwidth constrained Internet connection and turning on video causes your audio to stutter, you may want to rethink that and maybe have the video on for the ďŹ rst 30 seconds as you say "Hi" and then disable it and turn it off.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

The other thing I've noticed a lot is that people just aren't joining with the video for whatever reason. Zoom has a nice virtual background feature where you can replace the clutter behind you as you can see in my oďŹƒce. All I'm using is proper lighting or a different type of lighting. So, even though I've got a nice overhead light and it's nice and bright, I've got a couple of lights here off to my right and my left that are focused on me and not on my background. So I'm lit up and the focus of the video instead of everything else around.

Scott: The funny thing with the Zoom and the virtual background is that you can go to pixabay.com and download a background for free.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

Just pick a background, could be somewhere hot, somewhere in Europe, wherever it doesn't matter. You can search backgrounds and put that in the back behind you.

I heard on one meeting there was a bunch of people on the meeting and two people had the same background. So from a social distancing perspective, they had to argue over who should have been in there. That's too funny.

For GoToMeeting you can't use a virtual background, but, what you can do, there's a setting to blur the background. If you want the focus to be on you and then whatever is behind you, you can blur that. Obviously I think people are still getting used to muting themselves when they're not talking. Sometimes there's interference in the background, but I think overall, online meetings are here to stay and, we'll see how that goes.

Anything else you wanted to close with or do you think we're good for this episode of the Optrics Insider Shaun?

Shaun: The only other thing that I was going to mention is that the people that have been doing online marketing and videos over the past many years, they've really caught on to a utility called OBS Studio.

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Apple Mail iOS Bug, Zoom v5 Update & Online Meeting Etiquette

I don't know if you'll notice it now. I've got the logo up in the top left corner and my name down along the bottom.

This has been done using OBS Studio and while OBS Studio was primarily designed to help people to broadcast things it ties into Facebook Live and YouTube Live, and all of those other utilities, you can actually run it locally like I am to do nothing more than create a virtual webcam that can then be used in Zoom or other online meetings.

Scott: Before we did the episode you showed me that you could also have a picture and picture and you can share other screens so I guess it depends on how fancy you would like to get.

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Optrics Engineering Optrics Engineering is a licensed engineering ďŹ rm specializing in network hardware, software consulting and training solutions coupled with a successful Internet-based technology-marketing company.

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