As school resumes, so does Zoombombing
Online intruders in San Leandro, Albany interrupt class, orientation
The superintendent of the San Leandro Unified School District is stepping up online security after the latest incident of Zoombombing this week — intruders invading a teacher’s classroom video feed to post lewd material or shout obscenities or insults.
Superintendent Mike McLaughlin said an incident occurred in a class Monday that resulted in students being shown “inappropriate and possibly pornographic images.” No further details were provided, but the superintendent said the district is providing support to families of students exposed to the images at the same time it tries to find those responsible.
“We are still currently investigating to determine exactly what occurred and if these individuals were students or other members of the school community, or outside individuals,” he said in a message to parents. “The principal of the school will be working closely with the families affected by this incident to provide support during this ongoing investigation.”
With students heading back to class remotely, schools are dealing with Zoombombing again. A burst of the online attacks came last spring as schools hurriedly moved classes online, often without sufficient planning or security. Zoom of San Jose, which has seen usage soar during the pandemic as both workplaces and schools adopt its video chat software, responded to the bombing boom by fixing some security flaws and taking measures to increase safety.
Still, the Zoombombing continues. At Albany High School last week, a freshman orientation was disrupted by people who drew obscene pictures and engaged in racist and sexist speech in the chat function. The district apologized, said it’s investigating and increased security, including requiring all students to log on using only schoolissued email accounts. Because the Albany orientation included parents, people with nonschool emails accounts were admitted.
San Leandro Unified also plans to allow only schoolissued accounts to access Zoom classes, McLaughlin said.
Zoombombing has also intruded into other types of online meetings, including a July virtual candidates forum for the Oakland school board in which the uninvited guests made death threats and racist comments and a July meeting on homelessness in which interlopers yelled racist epithets and displayed images of lynchings. Police said they were investigating both incidents.
Zoom, which is publicly traded and was worth $83 billion as of Thursday, will report quarterly earnings Monday. The company is imposing new security requirements, including the use of a passcode or a “waiting room” feature that requires a host to approve each participant joining a chat, that take effect Sept. 27.
Zoom faces competition from Google, which has been offering its Google Meet service for free to gain users, and Cisco, which offers WebEx videoconferencing. On Tuesday, Cisco struck a deal to acquire BabbleLabs of Campbell to improve audio quality on WebEx calls.