Chatham-Kent police services reports Zoom hack that included disturbing video

Chatham-Kent police report Zoom hack that included disturbing video [Update]

Chatham-Kent Police Services have reported a Zoom hack that included a disturbing video.

A Zoom video meeting that involved 200 people who were discussing the upcoming Chatham-Kent Miracle Day Food Drive was hacked by an unknown perpetrator. The video showed child pornography, leading members of the Criminal Investigations Branch and Internet Child Exploitation Unit to take over the investigation.

Additionally, the release says these officers are concerned for those in the video and are working with federal and provincial law enforcement agencies to find them and figure out who shared the content.

Anyone with information about the Zoom meeting is asked to contact Constable Cole Abbott at colea@chatham-kent.ca or 519-380-6024.

Recently, Zoom has experienced a number of notable hacks.

Reportedly, 500,000 hacked Zoom accounts were sold on the dark web, while a Delaware congresswoman was also affected by a hacked video featured the N-word, swastikas and pornography. Additionally, a dance instructional class was hacked by “uninvited men.” The issue is becoming so common that there’s now a term for it: “Zoom bombing.”

Back at the beginning of April, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan says that the company “messed up” in launching a service that can be easily taken advantage by trolls and attackers.

“I really messed up as CEO, and we need to win their trust back. This kind of thing shouldn’t have happened,” Yuan told the Wall Street Journal.

Zoom has provided a statement for the matter.

“This incident is truly devastating and appalling, and our user policies explicitly prohibit any obscene, indecent, illegal or violent activity or content on the platform. Weare looking into this specific incident to ensure the appropriate action is taken. Zoom strongly condemns such behaviour and recently updated several features to help our users more easily protect their meetings. We have enabled meeting passwords and virtual waiting rooms by default for users enrolled in our K-12 program school program, as well as our Free Basic and Single Pro users. For all users, we have made the Zoom Meeting ID less visible to help prevent unintended sharing, and we have added a new Security icon to the Zoom meeting controls for all hosts to help them quickly access in-meeting security features, including the ability to remove participants and lock meetings, among other actions. In the latest version of Zoom, there is a new ‘Report a User’ feature in the Security icon for meeting hosts and co-hosts to flag users, who are misusing the platform, to our Trust & Safety team. We encourage users to report any incidents of this kind either to Zoom so we can take appropriate action or directly to law enforcement authorities.”

Source: Chatham-Kent Police Services

Update:04/05/2020: Zoom has provided a statement regarding the incident. The company also says that within the last month it has launched a ‘best practices for securing Zoom meetings.”

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