Zoom today announced the launch of an automatic update feature designed to streamline the update process for desktop clients.
The new feature is currently only available for Desktop Zoom clients on Windows and macOS, as the Linux platform is not currently supported.
Zoom says mobile device users can also keep their apps up-to-date automatically through the built-in automated updates from their respective app stores.
“For most individual users, automatic updates will be enabled by default. When enabled, users will have the option to turn off automatic updates for their desktop client after the first install or update where this feature is present, ”said Jeromie Clark, Technical Product Manager Security. and confidentiality at Zoom.
“Users can also change this preference at any time by checking or unchecking ‘Automatically keep my zoom up to date’ under Zoom> Settings> General.”
Zoom users will be able to switch between slow and fast update frequencies, with less frequent updates and a focus on maximizing stability when the slow option is selected. The latest features and updates will be installed as soon as they are available when choosing the quick update channel.
However, regardless of the update channel chosen, critical security updates from the Zoom client will be automatically deployed to all users with automatic updates enabled.
Although the platform has also provided automatic updates prior to this to enterprise users, this update “expands the target audience to include all users of individual desktop clients who are not members of an organization. company “.
Zoom also added support for two-factor authentication (2FA) to all accounts in September 2020, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in October 2020, and security enhancements to stop zoombombing trolls within a month. later.
The company’s video conferencing software has become an extremely popular way to stay in touch with friends and organize meetings online since the start of the pandemic.
Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan reported a meteoric rise in April 2020 after the platform reached 300 million daily Zoom meeting participants.
The launch of automatic updates for desktop clients could not have come at a better time, given that Zoom has fixed over a dozen medium and high severity security vulnerabilities in the past two months alone. .
In April, Zoom Messenger was also hacked during the Pwn2Own 2021 competition by Daan Keuper and Thijs Alkemade from Computest. They obtained code execution on the targeted device using a no-click exploit chain combining three Zoom Zero Day bugs.
