Zoom’s desktop and VDI clients, along with the Meeting SDK for Windows, are at risk due to a critical flaw discovered by Zoom’s offensive security team. Tracked as CVE-2024-24691, this improper input validation vulnerability could potentially allow unauthenticated attackers to escalate privileges on the target system over the network, posing a significant security threat.
The popularity of Zoom skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a peak of 300 million daily meeting participants by April 2020. This widespread adoption makes the vulnerability particularly concerning as it could affect a large number of users and organizations relying on Zoom for remote meetings, educational sessions, and social interactions.
In addition to the main vulnerability, the latest Zoom release addresses six other security issues, including vulnerabilities enabling privilege escalation, information disclosure, and denial of service attacks. It’s crucial for Zoom users to promptly apply the security update to mitigate the risk of external attackers exploiting these vulnerabilities to compromise sensitive data or disrupt meetings.
By ensuring their Zoom clients are updated to the latest version, users can minimize the likelihood of attackers exploiting the flaws to elevate privileges, steal data, or install backdoors. Given the potential impact on user privacy and organizational security, proactive measures such as applying software updates and adhering to security best practices are essential in safeguarding against emerging threats in remote collaboration tools like Zoom.
