Data Security Experts Red Flag Zoom App

Hyderabad: Data security researchers claim there are huge security and privacy concerns in video conferencing app Zoom. Citizens Lab, which had earlier exposed lacunae in messaging platform WhatsApp, identified a serious security issue with Zoom’s ‘Waiting Room’ feature. Union defence minister Rajnath Singh and ex-AP chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and several other key departments were using Zoom in the wake of lockdown and coronavirus pandemic.

High-stake business meetings, political conferences, official conferences were being conducted over platforms like Zoom and experts fear eavesdropping could be easy for intelligence networks, cyber criminals as well as spies. “There is a serious threat. Coronavirus pandemic situation doesn’t mean you give up privacy, there is increased attention on Zoom, and its practices,” security researcher Srinivas Kodali told TOI.

“Zoom calls are not end-to-end encrypted, which means your video calls could be recorded or accessed by anyone with access to their servers. Countries like Taiwan are banning government use of Zoom as there are concerns over the servers being in China. In this context, the Indian defence establishment using Zoom is a security concern. With our own infrastructure by NIC being used for videoconferencing of the prime minister, it is surprising the defence ministry is using Zoom to discuss national security,” he added.

Citizen Lab investigation found that Zoom claims the app uses “advance encryption standard-256” for meetings. However, they found that in each Zoom meeting, a single AES-128 key was used in electronic codebook mode by participants to encrypt and decrypt audio and video. “The use of ECB mode is not advisable as patterns present in plaintext are preserved during encryption,” the Lab said.

Meanwhile, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan assured users that the company was working to improve security and privacy on the video-conferencing app.

Source: ToI

Image Courtesy: The Pioneer