A virtual event with Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was canceled earlier this month after the Zoom video conference was “hijacked” by a participant who was showing pornographic images. “We’ve been the victim of a conference call or Zoom hijack and are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident that we deeply regret,” said Brent Tjarks, Executive Director of The Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA), which hosted the event via a Zoom link. “We had different programs and nothing like this has ever happened to us.”
He said he suspects one of the safety switches that mute spectators at an event was misadjusted, but he wasn’t sure of the details. The decision to cancel was made in consultation with the Fed after the incursion.
A few minutes before the event began, an attendee using the username “Dan” began displaying graphic, pornographic images, according to a Reuters reporter on the conference call.
Microphones and video were not muted by the organizer upon joining.
More than 220 participants joined the Zoom call at one point before it ended.
What Zoom says
“We were deeply upset to hear of these types of incidents and Zoom strongly condemns such behavior,” Zoom spokesman Matt Nagel said in a statement. “We take disruptions to meetings very seriously and are working closely with law enforcement where appropriate.”
Zoom use has mushroomed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The service has come under fire for privacy and security issues, including incidents of “Zoom bombings” where uninvited users entered and disrupted meetings.
In March 2020, the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a Zoom warning, urging users not to make meetings public on the site or share links widely, after receiving two reports of unidentified people falling into invaded school meetings.
In response to the disruptions, Zoom rolled out major upgrades, including end-to-end encryption for video calls.
The Fed said the event, which was due to include a speech by Waller and a question-and-answer session, was canceled due to “technical difficulties.”
Fed events tend to be highly choreographed and security is usually tight.
The approximately 100 members of the MBCA include banks with assets between 10 and 100 billion US dollars.
