Zoom has been plummeting since the revelation that its supposed end-to-end encryption was a sham. After the initial surge in popularity due to the containment measures requiring remote work, everything has changed for users and businesses.
Now, the use of this video conferencing application has been banned, primarily due to repeated reports of security and privacy issues. In January, the cybersecurity firm Check Point demonstrated that an attacker can easily generate active meeting IDs, which they can then use to join meetings that are not password-protected.
Although Zoom made several recommendations , such as the use of waiting rooms, passwords, mute controls, or limitations on screen sharing, the public continued to use Zoom without using these security measures.
As a result, numerous cases of Zoombombing (unauthorized intrusion into Zoom meetings by people using the application to harass others) have been reported . There have been reports of people joining meetings to add pornographic videos.
In addition to the Zoombombing currently affecting users of the platform, other security issues have also arisen . Last week, former NSA hacker Patrick Wardle announced that he discovered two vulnerabilities in the Zoom application that allow malicious third parties to take control of a Mac computer, including the webcam, microphone, and even full system access.
After this discovery, many companies began to distance themselves from the application , including Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and SpaceX, the NSA, Google employees, among others.
As the Zoom app has received increasing criticism for its security concerns, other security experts continued to dissect it and identified several problems, such as the fact that Zoom meetings do not support end-to-end encryption, meaning that Zoom can access the content of meetings held with its app, or that certain Zoom encryption keys are transmitted to meeting participants through a server based in China.
All these problems have led users to turn against the company . Last week, a Zoom user filed a class-action lawsuit against Zoom Video Communications in a California court.
The initiative follows reports that the Zoom app for iOS was sending analytics information to Facebook when users opened the app.
According to Zoom, it argued that it "used a Facebook development kit, which warned in its documentation that it received data from any app developed with it," but this information was not included in the application's documentation, much less in its terms and conditions of use.
Aware that it has many things to fix in its application, the Zoom company has gone to work to provide an answer to the security and confidentiality problems of which it is accused.
But for now, the actions seem insufficient, because one of its shareholders, including Michael Drieu, launched a class-action lawsuit against Zoom Video Communications last Tuesday, accusing the company of overstating its application's confidentiality standards and failing to disclose that its service did not actually have end-to-end encryption.
Last week , Zoom CEO Eric Yuan apologized to users , saying the company had fallen short of community expectations regarding privacy and security and was taking steps to address the security issues the app is currently facing.
Although this may already be too late , various applications have taken advantage of this problem with the application to offer their services, such as Facebook, Skype, Houseparty, FaceTime, among others.