Somag News contacted Zoom’s advisory in Brazil, but the company limited itself to saying that user safety is one of its concerns. “Zoom takes user safety seriously. We are investigating the matter,” says the company’s statement. According to the Bleeping Computer website, several random samples from the databases obtained by Cyble revealed active accounts on Zoom, confirming the legitimacy of the leak. Some passwords, however, do not work and may come from old attacks. The accounts would have been made available almost or completely free of charge as a means of increasing the reputation of hackers on the forums. Experts speculate that the credentials are intended primarily to break into other people’s meetings and cause intentional disruption, a practice known as zoom bombing. Two weeks ago, Zoom defended itself against criticisms of privacy and security saying that the program was created to serve companies and universities with their own IT teams. This feature would have left the app vulnerable in unpredictable usage scenarios, caused by the sudden increase in use of the tool in the home office. Before the pandemic, the number of video calls in the service reached a maximum of 10 million per day. Currently, the volume reaches 200 million meetings daily. As a consequence, the developers claim that previously unknown security problems were evident. However, the Bleeping Computer survey points out that several blocks of data exposed on the dark web are linked to educational institutions, with a “.edu” domain. One carries 290 credentials with e-mails from US universities. For the time being, it is not known whether the database includes information from Brazilian institutions. Zoom is committed to making security improvements to the software. Some of them have already been made, such as the change in integration with Facebook accused of collecting too much user data. The company also promised to invest in measures such as rewards programs to find vulnerabilities and publish transparency reports. How to protect yourself Zoom users must change the password used in the program to prevent the account from being hacked. In addition, it is important to change the password for all sites where the same code was used. Leakages of this type usually provoke a wave of attempts to attack the most varied services in an attempt to victimize users who often repeat passwords. Services like Have I Been Pwned already have an updated database and can tell if an email address has been put up for sale. However, it is prudent for every service user to change their password to avoid problems. Whoever created an account by logging in with the Google or Facebook account is not affected by the leak. In addition, it is important to take security precautions to protect yourself from meeting intrusions, such as using the guest password, creating a waiting room, and applying restrictions to participants. Finally, if you or your company deals with sensitive data, the recommendation is to look for more secure communication programs that offer encryption, such as Threema and Signa
