Hackers are now hijacking video calls and posting hate speech together with offensive images that include pornography. This new kind of harassment has been called Zoombombing, and the phenomenon has become alarming enough to concern the FBI and issue a warning to Zoom users.
A Ph.D. student Zoombombed
A student defending his doctoral dissertation tells his story to the NPR. Dennis Johnson does many things on the internet. His doctoral defense was made over a video conference using Zoom.
His audience was considerable, estimated at forty people. This group included his closest friends, classmates, family, as well as his dissertation committee. He was studying at the California State University at Long Beach.
Johnson was the first in his family to have graduated with a college degree. No surprise that he is also the first to get a doctorate. Thus, he wanted his family and friends to share this significant moment and success in his academic and professional life.
However, in the middle of presenting his dissertation, the projected screen started showing somebody drawing male genitalia. It confused Johnson at first, saying that he wasn't sure of what was happening.
He was surprised, and he said he froze, and everyone else who was on the video call also started to freeze.
The attacker afterward wrote some racial slur on the projected screen for everyone in the video call to witness.
The event's organizers then blocked the screen from everybody until they can find a way to eliminate the intruder from interrupting the occasion with his dirty act. Johnson and the committee failed to identify the perpetrator.
Johnson still managed to complete his presentation. He shared that once it was all over and the committee gave him their congratulatory greetings, he started to leave, and then all of it started to sink in finally. He could not communicate, and he just had to walk out of his house and not see or talk to anybody.
Other Zoombomer activities
Zoombombers have been documented to disrupt an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the city of New York, saying, among others, that "alcohol is soooo good." Also, a Texas Sunday school was invaded, as well as the University of Southern California online classes, and a Kalamazoo, Michigan city meeting.
With millions at home and schools being closed, Zoom started to rise in popularity, with 200 million online calls made each day last March. It was a rise from a mere 10 million daily calls made last December. That newfound popularity, however, is bringing in new scrutiny from the FBI. The agency is explicitly warning schools to be more careful. It said it had received a lot of reports of video conferences disrupted by hate speech and pornographic images as well as threatening language, according to the FBI's Boston office.
Zoom has started to address the problem and released a guide on how people can protect their conferences. It has also modified accounts of universities and schools by making it have default privacy settings. Letitia James, New York Attorney General, sent a letter to Zoom with queries about its privacy and security protection features.
Security researcher and former NSA employee Patrick Wardle state that strong security, privacy controls, and encryption seem to be missing in Zoom. He, along with other researchers, have found a flaw in the software that can allow hackers to spy through webcams and microphones. Meanwhile, Zoom has said that it already made fixes for such issues last Wednesday.
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