Zoombombing Action Disrupts Wantiknas Online Discussion Events

Ilustrasi peretasan (Image by methodshop from Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Online discussion activities organized by the National Technology, Information and Communication Council (Wantiknas) through the Zoom teleconference application were hit by a hacker attack. The hack, known as Zoombombing, disrupted the program by displaying pornographic videos during the discussion.

As the opening speaker was the Head of the National ICT Council Implementing Team, Ilham Habibie. Present as sources included the Director General of Information and Public Communication (IKP) of the Ministry of Communication and Information, Widodo Muktiyo and the founder of the social media analysis platform Drone Emprit, Ismail Fahmi.

While the presentation was in progress, several unidentified participants displayed pornographic videos running on the Zoom platform. Suddenly all the participants in the online discussion could watch pornographic videos at the same time.

"Fortunately, when I gave my presentation, what appeared on my screen was only full screen ppt. So it was not distracted by this scene. Only the audience pity, the heart can fall off," quoted VOI from Facebook's Ismail Fahmi account, Thursday, April 16.

As a result, the online discussion activity which was attended by hundreds of participants was temporarily suspended. Likewise, livestreaming broadcasts through the YouTube channel were also stopped.

The term Zoombombing refers to interference from outside parties who hijack online discussion programs through pornographic images or videos. This action is increasingly happening as the popularity of the Zoom application has skyrocketed as a teleconference medium during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, the Zoom application is currently receiving a lot of negative criticism from its users in various countries. Not only cases of hacking and zoombombing actions that are increasingly happening.

This application is in trouble because it is said to share Zoom user's personal data to Facebook's social media. Not to mention the teleconference at Zoom is also not end-to-end encrypted, so it doesn't protect the user completely.