The security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh who publicly disclosed
the Zoom security vulnerability has noted that depending on your browser
setting on whether to always open Zoom links with the associated app is
on, a malicious webpage (that could be hidden in a iframe) can
automatically launch Zoom with your camera enabled without asking. This
is true for Windows as well as for Mac for Firefox and Chrome browsers.
If your browser settings are set to always these type of Zoom links with the associated app, you will be automatically launched into a Zoom conference with your camera enabled.
How to prevent Zoom from auto-opening Zoom links on a webpage :
In Mozilla Firefox,
- 1) Click the menu button
and choose Options.
- 2) In the panel, go to the Applications section.
3) Search for the Content Type zoommtg and select it.
4) Click on the Action column in the zoommtg row to change the action to "always ask"
In Google Chrome:
This is harder for Google Chrome which saves such settings in a preferences file which isn't accessible from the browser.
Here's the more "hacky" way:
1) Navigate to chrome://version/ and find the path listed under "Profile Path".
2)
Quit Chrome, open that directory, and then open the "Preferences" file.
This will appear be a long line of text in a text editor.
3) Look for the string "zoommtg":false or "zoomrc":false. If it either exist, remove them. If there is a comma immediately after either string, remove it as well.
4) Save the file.
and this is what you will see in Google Chrome: