While we have seen that the video conferencing boom has meant that Zoom is currently the most used platform all over the world and its valuation has also jumped overnight, it also means that the flaws in Zoom have been highlighted because people are using it in ways the company might not have imagined. One of the reasons why Zoom is being used quite widely is because the platform lets many users get in the meeting rather than the limits set by other platforms. Now, it is also not the case that Zoom is a new platform as we know that it has been around since quite a long time.
That means it is likely that Zoom’s security issues were known to people who were using the platform from earlier. On this note, there is a new report emerging out of the industry saying that one of Zoom’s business partners, Dropbox, knew about the platform’s security flaws and also hired hackers to find them and enter the system. Dropbox flew two Australian hackers on an eight-hour flight to Singapore to attend a live hacking competition sponsored by Dropbox.
However, these hackers utilized their time on the flight by getting a head start and hacking Zoom, a videoconferencing service that they knew was used by many Dropbox employees. This was a practice session for the hackers but it came to be very useful for Dropbox in knowing about the flaw inside Zoom. Later, the hackers revealed a major security vulnerability inside Zoom which could have allowed attackers to covertly control certain users’ Mac computers. Former Dropbox engineers have also said that “It was precisely the type of bug that security engineers at Dropbox had come to dread from Zoom”. However, Zoom’s investors say that the platform was built for businesses and the company did not predict it can be used by so many people during a pandemic.
