I was trying not to post anymore about Zoom but this Forbes article has a totally different angle on Zoom than all the anecdotes we have been reading
Zoom Isn’t Malware But Hackers Are Feeding That Narrative, And How: Zoom-Related Threats Up 2,000%
During March 2020 alone, it has been reported that daily traffic to the Zoom.us download page has increased by 535%. That’s quite a statistic, as is the fact that in the same month there were more than 200 million daily Zoom meeting participants. A less positive Zoom-related number from March has been dropped into my inbox though: according to threat research analysts at Webroot, malicious files with “zoom” in their name jumped by 2,000% from the previous month.
Zoom has come in for a lot of media attention since the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a surge in working from home and a corresponding surge in usage of the video conferencing tool. Some of the most balanced and genuine reporting has been by my colleague and friend, Kate O’Flaherty, who has covered Zoom privacy and security issues in-depth. Unfortunately, there has also been a lot of reporting that has been genuinely misguided and some that are best described as almost hysterical. I have seen Zoom referred to as being malware on numerous occasions, for example. Here’s the thing, Zoom is not malware, but hackers are feeding that delusion by exploiting its popularity. And how. Between February and March, Webroot saw an increase above 2,000% when it comes to malicious files with zoom in the name.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2020/04/12/zoom-isn…
The bad news is that in lawsuit obsessed America a lot of potential users will avoid Zoom to “CYA.” There was a curious positive spin in the news about the Google ban, Google corporate uses their own Teams app and any Zoom Google employee use is of the free service. The Google ban reduces useless server load! Expect a lot of security updates from Zoom as they battle the hackers and that should be a net positive in the long run.
Denny Schlesinger
Long ZOOM