Greg's Corner

Half a million Zoom accounts for sale

With so many of us now working from home, a great many of us have had to attend virtual meetings. The most popular app to accomplish these meetings has been Zoom. While Zoom has been a blessing to help keep many businesses running, it has not been without its problems. A slew of internet pranksters have been able to gain access to live Zoom meetings. While some of the pranks have been harmless, others have seen explicit or violent imagery shared. There have even been instances of hate speech being spouted during some of these meetings. Considering that Zoom has also been used for virtual classrooms, the potential for abuse becomes even more disturbing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaecW3jEBZk%5D

To compound problems for Zoom, over 500,000 Zoom account credentials are being put up for sale on the dark web and in hacker forums. Hackers won’t be using them for just internet pranks as the credentials contain user email addresses and passwords. If the passwords are one a user has for multiple other accounts then that user can have their accounts on multiple platforms hacked. This could not only lead to the user’s identity being stolen but could also lead to financial losses if the user’s security isn’t stable enough.

Thankfully, Zoom already has security measures in place that users can enable to better secure their meetings and information. A list of those features can be found here but the main ones you should enable for every meeting are the ‘waiting room’ feature and the ‘lockdown’ feature. The former will allow you to screen participants in the meeting before you allow them to enter the meeting while the latter will allow you to eject unwelcome visitors. However, the best way to keep unwanted guests out of your meetings or classrooms is to not share the meeting information publicly.