Calls Diverted to Tiongkok, Zoom Data Security Is Even More Doubtful

Video call applications that are on the rise, Zoom back highlighted due to several weaknesses related to data security. The researchers revealed there were a number of video calls that were transferred to China.

It was reported that some Zoom’s video calls were diverted to China. Calls were made in North America, but for some reason sent to China. These were discovered by the security researchers at the Citizen Lab.

The findings brought back concerns related to Zoom data security. Moreover, Zoom some time ago is also considered leaked LinkedIn user data. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said the transfer was not intentional.

This happened amid their efforts to increase server capacity to accommodate high traffic during the corona pandemic. At that time, two centers in China were indeed prepared to receive calls if their main network was too full.

“If several connection attempts fail due to network congestion, the client will reach two secondary data centers as a potential backup bridge,” Yuan was quoted as saying by Ubergizmo on Sunday (5/4).

Various Security Problems Were Found on Zoom Server

One Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak said that Zoom appears to have prepared their own scheme to encrypt and secure calls. From these findings, it is known that Zoom’s server located in China has an encryption key to access online meetings from its users.

“Platforms like Zoom are attractive targets for various types of intelligence agents, not just China,” Bill was quoted as saying by TechCrunch at the end of last week (4/3). Some time ago, Zoom was also considered to be able to divulge LinkedIn user data.

Quoted by The New York Times, the vulnerability of the data is on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator service in the Zoom application. If a user signs in to the service by clicking on the LinkedIn icon next to the meeting participant’s name, the user can see the LinkedIn profile, such as location, company name and job title.

Many researchers believe that the application can automatically send users’ personal information to a data mining tool even when no one activates it. Zoom then deactivates the service that exposes LinkedIn’s profile.

LinkedIn will also suspend its integration with Zoom. “As we investigate this further,” LinkedIn was quoted as saying by The Verge some time ago (2/4).

With a variety of data security issues that afflict Zoom, the company claims to be focused on addressing security issues in its application. Zoom stops adding new features for the next 90 days and will periodically release transparency reports.

The Use of Zoom Has Been Banned In the United States for Safety Reasons

Zoom has also apologized to hundreds of millions of users of the zoom application, after receiving criticism from various parties. “We realize that we do not meet the expectations of community privacy and security,” Yuan said in a blog post, quoted from CNN.com some time ago (2/4).

Some circles in the US have banned the use of Zoom for both work and study activities in their homes. Most recently, several school districts including in New York forbade the use of Zoom to study online because of safety concerns.

The ban on Zoom in schools arose after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned schools about the dangers of Zoom’s default settings. For work needs, the rocket-making company founded by Elon Musk, SpaceX has also announced that all employee access to the Zoom application has been disabled some time ago (28/3).

SpaceX urges its employees to use other communication services in the midst of a corona pandemic. The reason for SpaceX is that Zoom users’ data security is unreliable. While SpaceX is a technology company that has high standards regarding data security for the national interests of the US.