By Alyza Sebenius and Kartikay Mehrotra
During the coronavirus pandemic, it seems as if everyone is connecting with Zoom’s videoconferencing app — including, on occasion, unwanted visitors.
Online trolls have been sneaking into web meetings and disrupting them with profanities and pornography for at least the better part of the last month. Cybersecurity researchers fear these disruptions could be a precursor to more harmful attacks allowing hackers to commandeer connected machines to access secure files or other corporate software.
“Much of our current reality is unchartered territory, and this growing dependence on Zoom at home is just another one,” said Mark Ostrowski, regional head of engineering for Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. “As soon as a platform’s attack surface gets big enough, you can only expect that they’ll become more interesting to attackers. That’s what’s happened to Zoom.”
In a Wednesday blog post, Zoom said that it takes security concerns “extremely seriously” and is working to address them. In addition, a Zoom representative said in an email that the company is upset about reports of harassment on Zoom and has sought to educate users about protecting meetings.
