Digital Forensics Dispatch

Penn State’s Black Caucus’s Virtual Presentation Hijacked

February 9, 2021

Recently, according to Penn State News, a virtual student involvement event including the school’s Black Caucus group was interrupted by a number of uninvited participants making racist remarks.

This type of incident, known as Zoom-Bombing” has unfortunately become much more common place with pandemic restrictions forcing many meetings, which were once held in person, online. Over the last year, Zoom and other video conferencing apps have introduced several security features to assist in securing meetings on their platforms. Unfortunately, if a meeting is not properly configured, incidents like this are still a very real threat. To learn a bit more about what changes Zoom has been making you could check out the November 18, 2020 post on Sharon Nelson’s blog, Ride the Lightning.  

The university is working with digital forensic examiners to collect evidence about the incident and those involved. The university police lauded the victims of the harassment for their quick reporting of the incident. In the course of the ongoing investigation, university police say they have consulted with both internal resources such as the school’s office of information and external entities such as the FBI. At this time the university has found no indication those who committed the disturbance were connected to Penn State in any way.

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