'Zoombombing' Is a Federal Offense That Could Result In Imprisonment, Prosecutors Warn 37
"Zoomboming," where someone successfully invades a public or private meeting over the videoconferencing platform to broadcast shock videos, pornography, or other disruptive content, could result in fines and possible imprisonment, according to federal prosecutors. The Verge reports: The warning was posted as a press release to the Department of Justice's website under the U.S. Attorney's office for the state's Eastern district with support from the state attorney general and the FBI. Now, prosecutors say they'll pursue charges for Zoombombing, including "disrupting a public meeting, computer intrusion, using a computer to commit a crime, hate crimes, fraud, or transmitting threatening communications." Some of the charges include fines and possible imprisonment. The press release says that if you or anyone you know becomes a victim of teleconference hacking, they can report it to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. "Do not make the meetings or classroom public. In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guest," the guidance reads. "Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people."
The Verge adds: "The guidance also advises against allowing anyone but the host to screenshare and asks that users of Zoom and other apps install the latest updates."
The Verge adds: "The guidance also advises against allowing anyone but the host to screenshare and asks that users of Zoom and other apps install the latest updates."
Sure (Score:5, Informative)
And anonymous phone threats from a public phone are illegal too.
Ask all the guys that got caught the last 140 years.
Both of them.
How about house arrest? (Score:5, Funny)
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It's kind of like being in jail, except with broadband internet, a comfy chair, games, and streaming Netflix and porn. The outside might as well not exist and like being in solitary you don't have anyone to talk to and no friends.
Please (Score:3)
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Tell me about it. I had exactly 30 minutes free this morning (8 to noon) that were not part of a fracking meeting.
Fucking clueless Eternal Septemberers! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never used Zoom and never will, but ... how insanely retarded is Zoom designed, for this to even ne possible?
NO password to enter the room?
NO explicit invitation of a predefined user, that only that user can user?
What is this? NIHland?
Did they even take a SINGLE look at IRC, which is only 33 years old now??
Hey politicians: This is not physical space! This is information space! If you are too retarded to know the differences, GTFOffline, and have your elderly care nurse print out your e-mails and put them under your sippy cup!
On the Internet, if you don't like somebody, you lock the space with authentication! Stop ruining the Internet because you are an arrogant clueless fuck!
This is our turf! Pallative care is yours!
Re: Fucking clueless Eternal Septemberers! (Score:1, Funny)
Jesis, the typos woth touxh screen keyboards are *killong* me!
(I always put the finger at rhe right spot. This os what Android "understood". FUCK TOUCJ ACREENS! And duxk auto-miscorrect too? That's even worse!)
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Get a bluetooth keyboard.
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Zoom's selling feature is that "it just works". No security, no protection, homebrew broken encryption, sends info to China on every call you make, but it sure is easy to use.
And that's why it's the go-to thing at the moment and not Signal or whatever, it's so easy to use that anyone in lockdown can use it within minutes, send a link and enter the code. Given that 99% of current users are using it to call their mom or play Cards Against Humanity with their workmates, it doesn't really matter if the secur
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It just works. For you, and your attacker.
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The government is threatening to spend taxpayer dollars to protect the profits of one single tech company who seems to be incompetent in keeping those network links private. The people using those services can simply use other software or another platform that is competent and capable of keeping their platform or software secure. LOBBYISTS hard at work stealing taxpayer dollars for a share of the profit, surprise, surprise, surprise.
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I have never used Zoom and never will, but ... how insanely retarded is Zoom designed, for this to even ne possible?
People don't pay for security, that is all. Even if they want to, there is no way for most people to determine how secure something is from the outside.
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No password and no explicit invitation needed. The phone number and id also never change, and using the same phone number you can try out other meeting id.
Teleconference services designed for business use almost all allow the setting of a PIN (in lieu of a password) to restrict access.
That can be changed at will. That so few people do is indicative of human laziness and desire for ease of use, rather than a lack of security features in the technology.
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Because no one really did threat analysis and assumed that people are just randomly malicious. It is like MS office files that can be emailed and take down the entire network.
We are using zoom in use cases that weren’t really intended, just like the windows machines were used in cases not intended. Zoom is a toy, yet
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The non-existent security of DOS and Windows 9x was due to legacy issues. DOS was designed for a single-user environment - there was just no need for security when there is exactly one user, who is trusted. Plus it couldn't do much, given that it disappeared completely whenever a program was loaded and the program got full hardware access. By the 9x era security was a concern, but introducing effective security would have broken a lot of existing software - and with the biggest selling point of Windows bein
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how insanely retarded is Zoom designed, for this to even ne possible?
NO password to enter the room?
NO explicit invitation of a predefined user, that only that user can user?
It's not that different from Microsoft's Skype for Business: if you have the invitation link, you can join a meeting without having an account. A difference is that one of the trusted attendees have to click "admit guest", but once they're in, I don't think you can kick them out (*) or block them from sharing visuals.
(*) Next time I'll pay attention. I never considered kicking out a consultant that we pay 150 euros per hour after fiddling for 10 minutes to get audio and screen sharing to work at the beginn
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so dialing a phone number is trespassing? (Score:2)
so dialing a phone number is trespassing?
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Trespass doesn't work because that would mean I could have people arrested for bypassing a ban on any website or service.
The idea that someone is "disturbing the peace" over the internet is laughable.
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Bypassing a ban on any website or service is a crime. A serious one. The law on this works, on many issues, through prosecutorial discretion: The people who write the laws just write them as over-broad and over-strict as they can get away with so they can make sure tha 'real' crimes are covered, even though that means potentially throwing teenagers in prison for twenty years because they cheated on Fortnite. Then the prosecution service makes the call of when to actually enforce the law, and when to turn a
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Show me one person in the world who was arrested, charged, and convicted after circumventing a ban on a website.
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The most famous case is Aaron Swartz. Has access to a website legitimately, but violated the terms of service by bulk-downloading material with a script. Arrested, charged - but not convicted, because he killed himself first. He's an example not just of over-criminalising trivial computer misuse, but the way in which prosecutors will often use financial pressure, threats and intimidation to force a guilty plea rather than risk going to court.
If you want a conviction, Oracle v. Rimini. Much the same thing ha
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40+ year old momma's boy in the basement and thrown the cuffs on them with or without a warning.
doesn't work in California as none of the homes have basements.
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Careful what you wish for. Next time you have to go to a zoom meeting you can't copy the link, have to type it in, of course mistype and end up in another meeting.
Then try to explain that to the judge who can't tell a computer from a dishwasher.
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Had to replace a circuit board on my dishwasher a few months ago. Not sure what it was, but there were things that looked suspiciously like a CPU and RAM chips (think the old 512k units that were small, flat and soldered onto a 4mb video card in the late 90s).
So I'm now getting somewhat confused between my dishwasher and computer....
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Hacking? (Score:1)
The FBI/DOJ is just plain stupid (Score:1)
There are no criminal elements here... just thuggery.
Come bring it, lame-ass government doggies.
E
Heed the warning (Score:2)
Next time, proxy your zoombomb through a VPN in Iran.
Tomorrow in the news: Iranian state hackers trying to disrupt zoom-based corporate meetings.