alt Hacker NewsI worked at Zoom during this time. That's not what happened.
Zoom used the same technique Cisco Webex did - they ran a webserver with an open port so that local "links" to a meeting could open on your own machine. It wasn't a backdoor. Apple flagged that as a potential security risk, so Zoom worked with Apple on how to safely remove only the webserver without affecting other functionality. We were happy that Apple worked with us on this.
However, I thought it was very interesting (and strange) that there was almost no reaction from the tech community that Apple had software running on every Mac that allowed them to remove any binary they wished. (Which sure sounds like a backdoor)
Apple did block the app so the 'working with Apple' didn't exactly earn Zoom a lot of trust with them otherwise they wouldn't have done it. They'd have let Zoom fix it in an update. And just make that update mandatory. They were just looking out for their own customers in limiting the impact, but for them to pull this handbrake means they really saw this as a big risk.
'But Cisco did it too!' is just whataboutism. It was shown to be exploited (IIRC to open scam websites) which was a real backdoor and a legitimate security risk, not a potential one.
This is something that should never have happened in the first place. Even releasing something like this in the first place is really showing no concern for the security of customers at all. What it looks like to me is that zoom wanted to conquer the market by ease of use and was willing to sacrifice security to do it. The zoombombing thing was another example.
And yes Apple has an emergency brake for malware outbreaks. And they've only used that one for high profile apps once, for zoom. They didn't do that lightly, especially during the pandemic when people were depending on it.
Really I have no good words for the actions of zoom. And there have been more incidents.
I was involved in mitigating these screwups in my work, what we did was flag zoom as malware ourselves so it automatically got removed from every company machine. And block it from being installed by the user. This block is still in place.
Ps I'm sorry if I sound harsh but zoom has caused several security worries at work and we don't even use it.