Be Careful When Using The Zoom Application, Hackers Can Infiltrate It

JAKARTA - Video call conferencing services are currently surging sharply amid the global pandemic COVID-19. Especially for those who have to work or study from home.

But unfortunately, among the social and physical distancing situations, there are only people who use it for crimes. According to the FBI report, there were a number of hackers who tried to infiltrate and create chaos in the teleconference network.

Launching News Week, the US federal bureau received reports from two schools in Massachusetts due to hacking problems through the teleconference application Zoom. The mode was that an unknown person entered among the students, who then issued rude curses to pornographic pictures and interfered with the teleconference.

"The FBI has received numerous reports of conferences plagued by pornographic images and hate speech as well as threatening language," the FBI said in its official statement.

In another incident, a hacker suddenly entered as a Zoom participant and posted a tattoo and interrupted the teleconference. Seeing this, cyber security expert Peter Tran said the incident occurred because of the mental situation of the teenagers who had been in the house for too long.

This is also what makes teenagers do pranks and pranks. Moreover, teleconference networks like Zoom do not have security protection, so that anyone can enter and become a participant.

"Targeting home users is much easier than targeting corporate users. Now that we've made that extension, exponentially, it's fertile ground, it's a game for hackers," Tran said.

In order to prevent the incidence of not wearing it from happening again, Tran tries to share safe tips while using the Zoom app. First, if you plan on holding a meeting, don't make it a public space, and try to control access.

"So whoever tries to join, you will get a notification message saying John Smith or anyone else who wants to join," continued Tran.

Second, after everyone joins this virtual meeting be sure to do a roll call, "This will tell you how many attendees are in the virtual meeting. If there are twelve and you only invite ten, better make sure you check who the additional two are," explained Tran.

Lastly, don't share the invite link on public platforms like social media. Tran says it's like leaving doors and windows wide open for hackers.

"This is our world of work. The physical world has been transferred to the virtual world, and this conference room is the door and the key, so we need to think about it carefully and of course have to be careful," he concluded.

As an added step, you will need to set up your home internet connection as if it were a corporate connection. Log out of the application when finished using it, and change your internet and computer passwords regularly.

In fact, Zoom has also shared safe tips when you use these video call conferencing. But often times we ignore it. Here are tips given by Zoom so that you are safe in conducting virtual meetings.

1. Never share the meeting link on social media, because this can be an opening for hackers.

2. Use a random meeting ID and not your personal meeting ID to host the event.

3. Activate the waiting room feature to decide who can enter the meeting.

4. Lock virtual meetings once they have started so that no one else can join them.

5. Allow only the host or primary user to control screen sharing.

6. Turn off the file sharing feature so that people are not flooded with content.