Omega.Net

Potential risk when screencasting with DimDim

November 21, 2009

Posted in: Uncategorized

First, let me say that I love DimDim.  If you aren’t familiar with DimDim, it is a free way to do online presentations similar to LiveMeeting or WebEx.  Its also an easy way to view web pages online with someone else using their screen recorder plugin, and is especially neat because it typically requires no user software installation.  Earlier this evening I was using DimDim to discuss which flights to choose while talking to someone on the phone.  It really helped because I could select the flights online and show it to the other person in real time.

After the call was over I logged into the meeting through my second computer, just to see what the experience looked like on the other side of things.  A few minutes later, Firefox happened to crash, and I assumed the meeting was over.  Firefox had completely closed and as I launched my browser I continued to work on other applications.  The screencaster app however had not stopped transmitting, and I continued to see the session on my second computer as it was still logged into the meeting. I fired up a shell and was able to see the following processes:

macpro:~ user$ ps auxw | grep een
rob        699   4.0  0.5   731600  44576   ??  R     6:56PM   1:14.50 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/OSXvnc-server -connecthost https://df1.dimdim.com/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX?dimdimId=dimdim____XXXXXX#roomId=_default#sessionId=XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXX#recording=off
user        754   0.0  0.0  2435032    528 s000  R+    7:09PM   0:00.00 grep een
user        698   0.0  0.0   668212   3904   ??  S     6:56PM   0:00.08 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dpc
user        694   0.0  0.0   668212   3888   ??  S     6:53PM   0:00.08 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dpc
user        692   0.0  0.6  3666808  58076   ??  S     6:53PM   0:04.65 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dos

I was able to kill these processes and stop the screen casting, but someone unfamiliar with the software might think they had quit on their own. This is a potentially serious issue if you were presenting to clients, etc. and then happened to open some confidential files. I’d recommend looking at your running processes after each screencasting session to ensure they exited properly.