What is ‘Zoom bombing’ and could it be the virtual way to protest at events?

BY SELINA McCALLUM

“The organizers came on and said, ‘it looks like we’ve been Zoom bombed,’ and that was the first time I’ve heard of that,” said Simone Jennifer Smith, Chief of Reporters at the Toronto Caribbean Newspaper.

Due to the global pandemic, thousands of events and workshops around the world have been cancelled or postponed to enforce social distancing. Millions of people are working from home or were laid off. The solution has been to introduce Zoom video calls, where people enter in a code and password on the Zoom application, and chat with others for conferences, distance education and socializing.

Chief Executive Officer, Eric Yuan wrote in a letter to Zoom users a few months ago that their daily users went from 10 million to 200 million in March 2020. The software company has been one of the biggest beneficiaries since the pandemic.

Smith was virtually attending a meeting on Sunday, May 17^th, which was hosted by African centred organizations in Toronto. They were going to be announcing the $25 million dollar funding for black communities, through a conversation with MPs Ahmed Hussen and Adam Vaughan.

“I realized something was wrong because there was just chaos. There was about 159 people. People were talking and no one’s mic was off,” said Smith.

“Zoom Bombing,” is when a hacker or troll hijacks a videoconference to post pornographic or hate images and interrupts the conference by saying and doing inappropriate things.

There have been reports of trolls breaking into Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and taunting recovering alcoholics. Moreover, there was also a virtual meeting of black students at the University of Texas being interrupted with racist slurs.

“Racism is real. In this time, there is still a lot of people filled with hate,” said Smith.

For me, this brings up an interesting question. Before this pandemic, people would grab their poster boards and signs and stand outside an event that promoted a person, belief, idea or values that they did not believe in. With events happening online now, does this mean that people who want to express their opposing views will crash online events? With no real security, how can we ensure events that are meant to be a safe space, can still remain a safe space online?

Yuan told Zoom users that Zoom has patched up flaws recently identified by a security research and ensured that instructors are the only ones who can share their screens by default.

He acknowledged the problems in his letter saying, “Over the next 90 days, we are committed to dedicating the resources needed to better identify, address, and fix issues proactively.”

Smith says that letting the hackers and trolls take over the livestream, to the point of cancelling the entire Zoom altogether lets them win.

“We need to take better precautions,” said Smith. “We can’t allow a few stupid people to get in the way of what we are trying to achieve.”