Zoom-Bombing Hijackers

The surge in video conferencing using is raising privacy and security concerns and 'Zoom-bombing', the practice of unwanted guests intruding on video meetings for malicious purposes, has also significantly increased during the pandemic according the the FBI. 

Zoom is an easy-to-use  video conferencing App which has has seen a massive increase in users since the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a large number of people to stay home and turn to video meetings for work or school.

The FBI is warning the public to watch out for hijackers trying to infiltrate their Zoom video sessions and has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic images and threatening language, incuding two hijacking incidents involving local schools that were using Zoom to conduct online classes. 

Other countries are witnessing hijacking attempts as well. Earlier this month, a school in Oslo, Norway reportedly had to shut down online video lessons after a naked man infiltrated a session attended by nine-year-old students. 

The hijacking attempts can occur because users of the video conferencing services are holding the meetings on public channels, which are then shared over the internet via URLs, making them accessible to anyone. In other cases, the hijackers can sometimes guess the right URL or meeting ID for a public Zoom session, giving them access to the feed.

To stay safe, the FBI is encouraging Zoom users, especially at schools, to make their video conferencing sessions private. “In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guests.... Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people.” that agncy advises.

Although taking the precautions recommended by Zoom and the FBI are likely stop a majority of unwanted incidents, video conferencing over the internet remains vulnerable to other forms of attack.

Conferences could be taken over entirely if the host's password were hackedand another vulnerability uncovered in 2019 reportedly could have allowed hackers to take control of the webcams of users and then spy on them even when the app was not in use, although the company is said to have fixed the issue since then.

FBI:     CheckPoint:      PCMag:     Bleeping Computer:      NewsWeek:      ABC News:     

Guardian:     Wired:    The Verge:  CISO Mag:     ThinkUm:     MarketWatch:   

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