‘Zoom-bombing’ on the rise: Hijackers invade videoconferences for work, school, FBI says

As video teleconferencing for work and school has become the norm, the FBI has seen a rise in reports of “Zoom-bombing” — the hijacking of conferences by disruptive outsiders.

“The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language,” said a warning from the agency’s Boston division.

Monday’s news release cited two recent examples from Massachusetts schools:

An unidentified person dialed into a online class being conducted using the teleconferencing software Zoom, yelled a profanity and then shouted the teacher’s home address. An unidentified individual disrupted a school meeting on Zoom and displayed swastika tattoos.

The FBI encouraged reporting such incidents for investigations. It also gave these guidelines:

Do not make meetings or classrooms public. 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 Zoom conference links on public social media. Provide the link directly to specific people. Manage screen-sharing options. In Zoom, change screen sharing to ‘Host Only.’ Ensure users have up-to-date Zoom clients. In January,  Zoom rolled out a security update that added passwords by default for meetings and disabled the ability to randomly scan for meetings to join. Ensure that your organization’s telework policy or guide addresses requirements for physical and information security.

Zoom, based in San Jose, was founded by Eric S. Yuan in 2011. It went public last year on the Nasdaq with an IPO price of $36. In the past two months, its share price has risen from $71 to $151.

2019 profile: Eric Yuan talks about Zoom