Technology has always proven to be a savior. Especially in this coronavirus pandemic condition where most people are locked in their houses. It is only because of tech that they are able to connect with other people and do their jobs from home. Without fast speed internet, this never would have been possible. But the internet alone is not enough for performing so many tasks. Though it is the basic requirement of all, it would be of no use without the applications.
Technology like Cloud Computing and Machine Learning has made it possible for people to continue with their work while sitting at home. And as they cannot meet, video conferencing platforms help in connecting them from various places. So they are able to create an office-like atmosphere with everyone sitting at their respective homes. The most boomed video conferencing platform is Zoom. Zoom has managed to get millions of new users since this lockdown happened. But because of the recent Zoom security problems, it is moving towards a ban in many organizations.
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The Problem
The spread of coronavirus started in early January this year. The virus emerged from Wuhan China, where the conditions went quite bad. After Wuhan, Italy was the second place to be stuck in the havoc of coronavirus. In no time, most of the countries have been affected by the virus and there are more than 2.5 million positive cases worldwide. And that has led the nations to declare large-scale lockdowns. Only essential services are allowed to be kept open. Other than that, all offices, schools, and colleges have been shut down. But none of these places could afford to stop their regular processing, so they had to find a way to continue with their daily works without actually meeting.
Zoom As A Solution
There was no issue for offices as people could work from their homes. However, for schools and colleges, conducting online classes was not an easy task. That is where Zoom came to their rescue. The Zoom app was founded in April 2011. But it was until 2020 coronavirus pandemic, that the app got some recognition. The year 2020 saw a sudden hype in the users of the Zoom App. It got millions of new users in just the starting few months of 2020. As it provided a user-friendly platform for conducting various meetings and school lectures.
People from all around the world started using the Zoom app. And that highlighted the app in front of the hackers and gave them an opportunity to target a lot of people with a single attack. With this, Zoom security problems started happening. When people suffered from a lot of issues, they started leaving the platform. The major security breaches in the Zoom app were:
macOS Vulnerability: People who were using the app on their Macs, got a web server installed secretly in their devices. This server gave their webcam’s access to several malicious websites. And it did not even require the user’s permission. Which created a lot of problems for the macOS users. To deal with this, Apple secretly released an update that fixed the problem. But some damage was already done till then.
Zoombombing: This is the worst one of various Zoom security problems. Just like photobombing, where people enter into someone else’s picture and ruin it, in Zoombombing, hackers entered into random video conferences and created trouble for the people.
Facebook Data Leak: It came to people’s recognition that Zoom was secretly sending all their data to Facebook. Even if the user did not have a Facebook account. Though Zoom tried to remove this part of their app, they ended up in a class-action lawsuit because of it.
“Attendee Tracking”: This Zoom feature created a lot of fuzz for people as this allowed the conference host to track if the attendees are off the Zoom screen for more then 30 seconds. And there is nothing an attendee can use to disable the feature if the host has already enabled it.
Because of all these security flaws, Zoom got declared an unsafe platform, and many organizations banned its use for its employees.
A Ban On Zoom
The ban started from organizations like NASA and SpaceX. And recently Google too banned the app from its employees’ work stations. Jose Castaneda, the Google Spokesperson, recently told in an interview that the Zoom app will soon stop functioning on their employees’ corporate computers because it did not match their security standards.
No one wants to put their company’s important data into risk, so the Zoom ban that has started from these big organizations will soon be moving towards other companies. If Zoom would not do anything about this, they will end up losing all their users.
The Reason Behind Zoom Security Problems
These Zoom security problems arose because of the sudden hype of their user base. When Zoom had a limited user base, it did not give much heed to their loose security policies. And neither did the users saw these problems. But as Zoom became popular all of a sudden, it gave a platform to the hackers to gain easy access to the people’s data.
Another reason behind this suddenly raised problems is the less secured home networks. As people are working from their homes now, so they are using their home networks. Most people do not secure their home networks properly, which makes it an easy target for hackers. So they were able to breach their security and gain access to their data.
Conclusion
Zoom security problems have led the app in a weird situation. But sitting idle would only bring them more difficulties. So Zoom has been trying to resolve all these issues with different new security policies. However, the effect of the same is yet to be observed. If Zoom manages to fix the problems with its app, it will continue to serve as a reliable video conferencing platform. And if it fails to do so, it will be replaced by some other video conferencing app in no time. Because no one wants to keep their data at risk.
