A recent joint report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Mission and Counterintelligence Mission centers alleged that video-conferencing app Zoom could be vulnerable to foreign surveillance.
ABC News reports that a recent federal intelligence analysis of the Zoom video conferencing app suggests that the service is vulnerable to foreign surveillance and hacking. A report was issued jointly by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Mission and Counterintelligence Mission centers recently and distributed to law enforcement and government agencies across the United States.
The report states that hackers “likely will identify new or use existing vulnerabilities in Zoom to compromise user devices and accounts for further exploitation of corporate networks.” Security fixes by Zoom reportedly do not eliminate the issues according to analysts as “the patching process is undermined by … actors who often capitalize on delays and develop exploits based on the vulnerability and available patches.”
A Zoom spokesperson told ABC News that the intelligence analysis is “heavily misinformed, includes blatant inaccuracies about Zoom’s operations, and the authors themselves admit only ‘moderate confidence’ in their own reporting. We are disappointed the authors did not engage with Zoom to verify the accuracy of these claims and understand the real facts about Zoom.”
Discussing previous issues that Zoom has faced, the company stated: “We actively and quickly addressed specific security concerns as they were raised over the past few weeks.”
Zoom usage has exploded from 10 million a day to 300 million since December which has caused issues for the company. “Zoom’s sudden immense growth and use across both public and private sector entities in combination with its highly publicized cybersecurity issues creates a vulnerable, target-rich environment,” the intelligence notice says. “Any organization currently using – or considering using – Zoom should evaluate the risk of its use.”
Breitbart News recently reported that file-hosting service Dropbox actually became so worried about Zoom’s security issues that it hired hackers to find vulnerabilities in the app and alerted Zoom to fix them.
Breitbart News recently reported that the CEO of the video conferencing company apologized in a blog post over the various security issues that its 200 million daily users are facing on the platform. CEO Eric Yuan announced a number of measures that the company is taking to make the app more secure as millions of Americans use the app to work and study from home. Breitbart News covered the criticism of the company over its lack of action on “Zoom bombing.”
Breitbart Tech recently published an article explaining how users can lower their chances of becoming victim to “Zoom bombing,” the article can be found here.
Read the full report from ABC News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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