A virtual event hosted by the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA) through the Zoom Video Communications Platform was hijacked with pornographic images. Due to this incident, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was not able to deliver his remakes on the economic outlook.
Zoom Hijacked
An event featuring Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller experienced hijacked after a participant displayed pornographic content in a Zoom meeting. Bloomberg reported that Waller was supposed to deliver his remarks regarding the economic outlook through the event hosted by the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America.
Executive Director Brent Tjarks stated that they have conducted various programs but this is the first time that they experienced this kind of incident. "We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret," he added.
Tjarks suspects one of the security switches mutes the participants incorrectly, but he has still not confirmed these allegations yet. A few minutes before the event was to start, a participant named "Dan" began displaying pornographic images by using screen sharing.
More than 220 participants were on the Zoom call before the event was terminated. The organizer of the event insisted to unmute and open the cameras of the participants upon joining the call.
Due to this, the board decided to cancel Governor Waller's speech after technical difficulties occurred during the event and posted the prepared speech on the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors official website.
His speech contains the progress of the Federal Open Market in moderating economic activity and reducing inflation by providing data and explaining the potential future state of the economy, as for him, his views depend on what the data say.
Reuters reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Boston office issued a warning in March 2020 regarding Zoom hijacking and told users not to make meetings on the site public or share links. During that time, the FBI received two reports of unidentified individuals invading school classes.
Zoom's Response
Zoom responded to this matter by rolling out major updates that prevent these things to happen in the future, including end-to-end encryption for conference video calls. Zoom-hijacking began in 2020 as it became a trend for pranksters that display explicit images and abusive messages.
Last year, Zoom agreed to pay $85 million as a part of a class-action settlement brought by its users, including church groups and other institutions. According to the complainants, they were left traumatized by these hijacks.
Federal Judge Laurel Beller granted final approval to this agreement, almost one year after it was filed. This settlement came from 14 class-action complaints against the company by users between March 2020 to May 2020.
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