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Zoom privacy risks: The video chat app could be sharing more information than you think - CNET.
There are many iOS vulnerabilities that hackers exploited via Zoom application and targeted Apple users. If hackers use such code, they can turn any Mac device into a spying machine with Zoom. Security researcher Felix Seele also shared his concerns about the way Zoom behaves like malware.
He also said that Zoom can give unauthorized users root access. Mac hacker Patrick Wardle showed how local unauthorized people can secretly tamper with or replace binary codes to gain root privileges.
Both Zoom and Apple have fixed that bug in their updates. Zoom changed its localhost web server settings, which allowed Mac users to uninstall the Zoom app manually from the menu bar.
Seele also wrote a tweet saying that Zoom has fixed the auto-installation issue. After that, Motherboard the platform that discovered the data sharing in the first place has confirmed in its article that Zoom has removed all of the codes and the Facebook SDK to prevent such sharing in the future.
However, there was another data handing issue Zoom was dealing with. On April 13, , Bleeping Computer published an article mentioning that the data for more than , Zoom accounts was up for sale on the dark web. Zoom had a security vulnerability that could allow hackers to execute cross-site request forgery CSRF and crack its six-digit meeting password in just half an hour. In the same blog post, Anthony shared that Zoom took the web client offline and fixed the vulnerability.
Furthermore, Zoom has also allowed users to manually change the default password and make it more complex by adding extra characters. Bugs are a common issue with different applications and software. Talos, a cybersecurity firm, noticed that hackers could send malware by creating GIF files and code snippets. Another problem was, Zoom was allowing users to send any type of files in its chat box, including:. These file types can easily transport malicious codes and corrupt the device wherever they are stored.
However, where file types are concerned, Zoom has left the meeting hosts to decide which file types they would like to allow participants to share in chat. Is Zoom secure? This Zoom screenshot shows how specific types of files can still be shared through the in-meeting chat feature.
Privacy experts previously expressed concerns about Zoom in , when the video-conferencing software experienced both a webcam hacking scandal , and a bug that allowed people to potentially join video meetings they hadn't been invited to , if those meetings weren't protected with a password. The issues were exacerbated by Zoom's widespread adoption at the start of the pandemic, but this was just the latest chapter in the software's rocky security history. It prompted Zoom CEO Eric Yuan to respond to concerns in April , freezing feature updates to address security issues over a day update rollout.
Zoom saw explosive growth at the time, increasing its ranks from 2, to 6, employees from February to December By the end of Zoom's hiring boom, the software had become the first video communications client to attain Common Criteria certification, an international cybersecurity standard awarded after rigorous analysis. Though Zoom has added these and other security features like end-to-end encryption , there are still a few things you should watch out for to keep your chats as private as possible.
For paid subscribers, Zoom's cloud recording feature can either be a life-saver or a catastrophic faux pas waiting to happen. If the feature is enabled on the account, a host can record the meeting along with its text transcription and a text file of any active chats in that meeting, and save it to the cloud where it can later be accessed by other authorized users at your company, including people who may have never attended the meeting in question.
Zoom does allow a narrowing of the audience here, however. Administrators can limit the recording's accessibility to only certain preapproved IP addresses, even if the recording has already been shared. Zoom has finally updated its meeting-client software to version 5.
Here's our guide on how to update to Zoom 5. The update is not yet available for iOS, as Apple has to vet the software before the new version of the app can be pushed out.
We also couldn't see in the Google Play app store as of Monday afternoon Eastern time April 27 , but odds are it will appear soon. No other company may have benefited more from the stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus crisis.
To put that in perspective, daily usage peaked at million people per day in March, the company said on April 1 opens in new tab. In December , Zoom usage peaked at 10 million daily users. The new version will include many of the security fixes we've recently seen for the Zoom web interface, including the abilities to kick out Zoom bombers from meetings, make sure meeting data doesn't go through China, and put everyone waiting for a meeting in a "waiting room.
We checked the Zoom changelogs opens in new tab and discovered that the update won't be available until Sunday, April Cisco Talos researchers said Zoom's meeting chat function made it too easy for outsiders to find all Zoom users in an particular organization. If you had a valid Zoom account, Cisco Talos explained in a blog post opens in new tab , you could pretend that you worked at any organization and get the full names and chat IDs of every registered Zoom user whose email address used that organization's email domain.
You would not have to verify that you worked there, and you wouldn't even need to be in a Zoom meeting to get the information. That information "could be leveraged to disclose further contact information including the user's email address, phone number and any other information that is present in their vCard," or digital business card, Cisco Talos wrote.
In a blog post opens in new tab April 20, Zoom said the option of excluding certain countries from call routing was now live. This will let Zoom meeting administrators avoid having meeting data routed through Zoom servers in China, the U. New updates to the Zoom platform opens in new tab for the web interface rolled out April 19 include masking some participant personal information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, during meetings. Another change is that users who share the same email domain will no longer be able to search for each other by name.
The New York Times opens in new tab reported that Dropbox executives were so concerned about security flaws in Zoom that in Dropbox created its own secret bug-bounty program for Zoom flaws. In other words, Dropbox would pay hackers for security vulnerabilities they found in Zoom. Dropbox staffers used Zoom regularly, and Dropbox was an investor in Zoom.
The Times reported that Dropbox would confirm the flaws, then pass them along to Zoom so that Zoom could fix them.
Zoom-meeting video recordings saved on Zoom's cloud servers can be easily discovered and often viewed, a security researcher told Cnet opens in new tab. Phil Guimond opens in new tab noticed that online recordings of Zoom meetings have a predictable URL structure and are thus easy to find.
The Washington Post reported last week on a similar issue with Zoom recordings that had been uploaded by users to third-party cloud servers. In those cases, the file names of meeting recordings followed a predictable pattern.
Until Zoom pushed out a series of updates opens in new tab this past Tuesday, Zoom meeting recordings were not required to be password-protected. Guimond built a simple tool that automatically searches for Zoom meeting recordings and tries to open them. If a meeting has a password, his tool tries to brute-force access by running through millions of possible passwords. If a meeting recording is viewable, so is the Zoom meeting ID, and the attacker might be able to access future recurring meetings.
But, Guimond said, the URL pattern is still the same, and attackers could still try to open each generated result manually. Zoom announced it was hiring Luta Security opens in new tab , a consulting firm headed by Katie Moussouris, to revamp Zoom's "bug bounty" program, which pays hackers to find software flaws.
Moussouris set up the first bug-bounty programs at Microsoft and the Pentagon. In her own blog post opens in new tab , she announced that Zoom was bringing in other well-regarded information-security firms and researchers to improve its security. In its weekly webinar, according to ZDNet opens in new tab , Zoom also said it would also let meeting hosts report abusive users, and newly hired security consultant Alex Stamos said Zoom would be switching to a more robust encryption standard after Zoom's existing encryption was found to be lacking.
In other news, a congressman has complained that a congressional briefing held over Zoom on April 3 was "zoom-bombed" opens in new tab at least three times. The head of Standard Chartered, a London-based multinational bank, has warned employees to not use Zoom or Google Hangouts for remote meetings, citing security concerns, according to Reuters opens in new tab.
Standard Chartered primarily uses the rival Blue Jeans video-conferencing platform, according to two bank staffers who spoke anonymously. Hackers are apparently offering to sell two "zero-day" exploits in Zoom to the highest bidder, Vice opens in new tab reports. Zero-days are hacks that take advantage of vulnerabilities the software maker doesn't know about, and which users have little or no defense against. Sources who told Vice about the zero-days said one exploit is for Windows and lets a remote attacker get full control of a target's computer.
The catch is that the attacker and the target have to be on the same Zoom call. This is a reaction to the discovery earlier in April that many Zoom meetings hosted by and involving U.
Usernames and passwords for more than , Zoom accounts are being sold or given away in criminal marketplaces. These accounts were not compromised as the result of a Zoom data breach, but instead through credential stuffing.
That's when criminals try to unlock accounts by re-using credentials from accounts compromised in previous data breaches. It works only if an account holder uses the same password for more than one account. Researchers from IngSights discovered a set of 2, Zoom login credentials being shared in a criminal online forum. Maor told Threatpost opens in new tab it didn't seem like the credentials came from a Zoom data breach, given their relatively small number. It's also possible that some of the credentials were the result of "credential stuffing.
Information-security researchers know of several Zoom "zero-day" exploits opens in new tab , according to Vice. Zero-days are exploits for software vulnerabilities that the software maker doesn't know about and hasn't fixed, and hence has "zero days" to prepare before the exploits appear. However, one Vice source implied that other video-conferencing solutions also had security flaws. Another source said that Zoom zero-days weren't selling for much money due to lack of demand. Criminals are trading compromised Zoom accounts on the "dark web," Yahoo News opens in new tab reported.
This information apparently came from Israeli cybersecurity firm Sixgill, which specializes in monitoring underground online-criminal activity. We weren't able to find any mention of the findings on the Sixgill website opens in new tab. Sixgill told Yahoo it had spotted compromised Zoom accounts that included meeting IDs, email addresses, passwords and host keys.
Some of the accounts belonged to schools, and one each to a small business and a large healthcare provider, but most were personal. If you have a Zoom account, make sure its password isn't the same as the password for any other account you have. Researchers at Trend Micro opens in new tab discovered a version of the Zoom installer that has been bundled with cryptocurrency-mining malware , i. The Zoom installer will put Zoom version 4. By the way, the latest Zoom client software for Windows is up to version 4.
The coin-miner will ramp up your PC's central processor unit, and its graphics card if there is one, to solve mathematical problems in order to generate new units of cryptocurrency. To avoid getting hit with this malware, make sure you're running one of the best antivirus programs, and don't click on any links in emails, social media posts or pop-up messages that promise to install Zoom on your machine. It can't stop other people from copying and redistributing its installation software.
Not only does Zoom mislead users about its "end-to-end encryption" see further down , but its seems to be flat-out, um, not telling the truth about the quality of its encryption algorithm. Zoom says it use AES encryption to encode video and audio data traveling between Zoom servers and Zoom clients i.
But researchers at the Citizen Lab opens in new tab at the University of Toronto, in a report posted April 3, found that Zoom actually uses the somewhat weaker AES algorithm. Even worse, Zoom uses an in-house implementation of encryption algorithm that preserves patterns from the original file. It's as if someone drew a red circle on a gray wall, and then a censor painted over the red circle with a while circle. You're not seeing the original message, but the shape is still there.
Yuan opens in new tab acknowledged the encryption issue but said only that "we recognize that we can do better with our encryption design" and "we expect to have more to share on this front in the coming days. In Zoom's announcement of the upcoming April 26 desktop-software update, Zoom said it would be upgrading the encryption implementation opens in new tab to a better format for all users by May Good software has built-in anti-tampering mechanisms to make sure that applications don't run code that's been altered by a third party.
Zoom has such anti-tampering mechanisms in place, which is good. But those anti-tampering mechanisms themselves are not protected from tampering, said a British computer student who calls himself " Lloyd opens in new tab " in a blog post April 3.
Needless to say, that's bad. Lloyd showed how Zoom's anti-tampering mechanism can easily be disabled, or even replaced with a malicious version that hijacks the application.
If you're reading this with a working knowledge of how Windows software works, this is a pretty damning passage: "This DLL can be trivially unloaded, rendering the anti-tampering mechanism null and void. The DLL is not pinned, meaning an attacker from a 3rd party process could simply inject a remote thread. In other words, malware already present on a computer could use Zoom's own anti-tampering mechanism to tamper with Zoom.
Criminals could also create fully working versions of Zoom that have been altered to perform malicious acts. Anyone can "bomb" a public Zoom meeting if they know the meeting number, and then use the file-share photo to post shocking images, or make annoying sounds in the audio. The FBI even warned about it opens in new tab a few days ago. The host of the Zoom meeting can mute or even kick out troublemakers, but they can come right back with new user IDs. The best way to avoid Zoom bombing is to not share Zoom meeting numbers with anyone but the intended participants.
You can also require participants to use a password to log into the meeting. On April 3, the U. If you do, anyone who knows your PMI can join any meeting you host, so share this information wisely.
As mentioned above, Zoom phishing campaigns are a popular way for bad actors to steal your account details. Use the tips above to determine whether the email is legit. If in doubt, get in touch with your IT department for advice. Setting a unique and strong password for each meeting remains the best way of ensuring that only the people you want in your meeting can attend.
Last year, Zoom made the sensible move to turn password protection on by default. But just to be clear, your zoom account password and meeting password are not the same — they are two different passwords. You should also avoid reusing meeting passwords. While you may find that the quality of your video call is better on the app, the web browser version gets security enhancements much faster.
And aside from the updates, the web version is still more secure. That's because it lives in a browser's sandbox, meaning it has far fewer permissions and a reduced ability to cause issues across your entire operating system. This ensures that the session cannot be eavesdropped on or tampered with. Audio Signature embeds a user's personal information into the audio as an inaudible watermark if they record during a meeting.
If the audio file is shared without permission, Zoom can help identify which participant recorded the meeting. Users authenticating with username and password can also enable two-factor authentication 2FA as an additional layer of security to sign in.
Is Zoom Secure? Breaking Down 10 Zoom Security Issues - InfoSec Insights.Is Zoom Safe & Secure?
Is Zoom Safe to Use? Here's What You Need to Know - Zoom’s huge meeting capacities
With most people working from home it is no surprise to see a rise in the use of video conferencing apps and chat services. Until a few weeks ago no one looked for a video conferencing app.
To make video calls they either used WhatsApp or FaceTime. But as the need to collaborate with teams rose, Zoom became the well-known video conference option.
This changed things, overnight, and Zoom became the most downloaded app. In the U. Various security and privacy concerns related to Zoom were brought to light, it was targeted by Zoom Bombers. A severe security issue related to Zoom webcams was brought to light, even when the video conferencing software was uninstalled it was able to steal data. All this made users paranoid and the started to look for Zoom alternatives but none could stand.
To deal with these issues the company started releasing updates and added new features. So, here are certain tips using which you can keep your Zoom Meeting Secure. The easiest way to secure Zoom Meeting is to password protect them and use Waiting Room.
Both these security features have been recently added to offer more safety. In addition to this users can lock down the meeting, disable the option to join before the host, and do a lot more things. With the help of a simple infographic, we have tried to explain the tips to keep Zoom Meetings secure. Using these tips, we hope you will be able to secure your Zoom Meetings and use the Zoom video conferencing app properly.
No software is completely bug-free therefore, disowning Zoom just because certain privacy concerns have been detected will not be a great idea.
Zoom has fixed the problem and is now offering various security options. Use them to stay safe when making Zoom Meetings and collaborate with your teams easily. We hope you will use these tips. Do let us know which tip you found useful and how it helped. Your feedback matters please do share in the comments section below. Windows Mac iOS Android. Preeti Seth , March 1, Share on:. What Do You Think? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
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