Zoom, from success on the Web to doubts about your security

Zoom, from success on the Web to doubts about your security

COMMUNICATION

The company’s international boss answers questions about the company’s structure that has broken the schemes of tech giants like Microsoft or Google.

On March 12 before Christ (before the running of the bulls) few Spaniards knew about Zoom. Perhaps when asked, many would respond that it is “that thing that serves to zoom in when taking a photo or video. Now in the eighth week AD (after delivery), Zoom has become one of the victors of the pandemic from Covid-19.

On the verge of celebrating its 10th anniversary, Zoom gave gold to founder Eric Yuan, whose fortune has risen to $ 7.57 billion in recent weeks. A meteoric rise that coincides with the success of his video conferencing company. At the end of December last year, the maximum number of participants in Zoom’s daily meetings, both free and paid, was approximately 10 million.

“In March of this year, we reached more than 200 million participants in daily meetings and in April of this year, we reached more than 300 million daily participants in meetings, both free and paid039; quot; points out this newspaper by Abe Smith, Head of International at Zoom.

A meteoric rise not without controversy regarding his safety. In recent months, large companies like Space X, Google or even NASA have discouraged its use. “We take user privacy very seriously and only collect the necessary data from people who use the platform to deliver the service and ensure that it is delivered effectively,” says Smith.

Zoom’s rapid growth has led dozens of security and privacy experts to question the company’s pillars. Interference in private meetings, public video conferencing hacks, fake domains, and data sales.

The company defends itself «Zoom complies with all laws, applicable privacy rules and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates, including the GDPR and the CCPA. ”

The app has been updated in recent weeks as doubts continued to grow. In early April, application engineers were ensuring end-to-end encryption, however the reality was different.

After an investigation by The Intercept, Creators of Zoom downgrade end-to-end security to TLS encryption. In other words, the application sends the video data of the call to the server, which decrypts and encrypts it again to send it to the other users of the conversation. On that journey, video calls land on Zoom’s servers unencrypted, making it the perfect time for cybercriminals to access information. “We are committed to ensuring best security practices across our platform,” announces Smith.

Is zoom secure?

“Zoom takes the privacy, security and trust of users very seriously,” said Abe Smith, Zoom’s international director, when asked if the services they offer are safe.

A question that has had to be answered countless times in the past few months. “Zoom’s growing popularity with consumers makes it one more target for bad actors,” he adds.

In mid-April, cyber security company Cyble alerted to the presence of more than 500,000 user accounts for the Zoom video call service, whose credentials were sold by some hackers on Deep Web forums for $ 0.002.

“We have already contracted with several intelligence companies to find these password dumps and the tools used to create them039; quot;, Smith details.

According to Cyble, these credentials would have been obtained through old leaks, with which hackers have managed to access the accounts of current users of the company through filling techniques. “We continue to investigate, and we are blocking compromised accounts, asking users to change their passwords for something more secure, and we are looking to implement additional technological solutions to strengthen our efforts,” announces the International Director of Zoom.

The data business

It was the trigger for Zoom’s security crisis. A group of researchers detected that the company shared usage data with Facebook, despite the fact that it did not have an account with said social network.

Zoom used a Facebook application development kit, which noted in its documentation that it received data from any application developed with it, but nevertheless, this information was not found in the terms and conditions of Zoom.

“We have never sold user data in the past and we have no intention of doing so in the future,” Smith replies to this newspaper. However, he says, he is “updating our privacy policy to make it more clear, explicit and transparent”; quot;