Ride the Lightning

How to Stop Zoom Bombing and Eavesdropping When You Video Conference

March 26, 2020

Amazing how we've seen the practice of law change in a week. Solo and small firm lawyers have really swarmed to Zoom for videoconferencing. We had a meeting today with a lawyer who had never used it and all he could say was, "This is so simple – this is great!" This revelation has been repeated many times over.

But there can be pitfalls. Thanks to our friend Craig Ball for a great post on how to stop Zoom bombing and eavesdropping.

Chipotle wanted to bring a little joy to COVID-stressed customers by hosting an online concert with singer/songwriter Lauv. Things didn't exactly go as planned.

Chipotle had to pull the plug after one attendee used Zoom's Screen Share feature to broadcast pornography to hundreds of other attendees.

Whoever configured the Zoom meeting apparently failed to select the option that limits the ability of any meeting participant other than the host to share screens. As a result, any attendee—including any troll logging in anonymously—could share any content they want with all other attendees. It's called Zoom bombing and it's a growing problem. As Craig says, if a Zoom bomber logs in multiple times, stopping the interloper is like playing Whack-a-Mole.

How to protect against that? The organizer who set up the Zoom meeting should have changed a Screen Sharing option buried in the program's settings menu, changing the default "All Participants" to "Host Only".

Craig offers a number of great tips to secure your Zoom meetings against both Zoom bombers and eavesdroppers. Be sure to read the post!

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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