The number of users on the Zoom video conferencing platform has increased considerably in recent months after the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. Accumulate no less than 200 million daily users . However, the appearance of a series of privacy and security problems made both individuals and companies began to doubt about the use of this application and ventured to try other tools.
And it is that as the popularity of Zoom increased worldwide, several privacy and security experts studied and analyzed the app and revealed several serious security problems. Among other things, the existence of codes that sent users the location and specifications of the device to Facebook was reported, even showing that the platform did not have end-to-end encryption for meetings.
Zoom has thus announced new features focused on security following the publication of several reports like these that demonstrated bugs and vulnerabilities of the system. Thus, in response to these privacy concerns, the company claims that it has fixed the main security problems in the latest version of the application: Zoom 5.0.
The new version, Zoom 5 , will be available for download and update on all platforms throughout these days and stands out for the new AES 256-bit GCM encryption, the standard that blocks any type of external interference. In addition, it includes many more improvements, all of them quite important, such as more privacy options to alleviate the concerns of its users. A new button has been added to the menu bar (a shield icon) to allow users easy access to the available security options. We can use it to quickly lock meetings, remove participants and restrict screen sharing and chat in meetings.
Zoom will also enable passwords by default for most customers, and IT administrators will be able to define password complexity for Zoom business users. Zoom’s waiting room feature is also enabled by default for Basic, Pro single license, and Education accounts. This feature allows a host to retain participants in a virtual room before allowing them a meeting.
“Most of the new features address ‘Zoombombing’ , which is nothing more than the bug that allowed an unknown person outside the group to sneak into Zoom calls and start transmitting porn videos or images or unpleasant photos in general Zoom’s previous default structure did not encourage setting a password for meetings, and allowed participants to share their screen.
Additionally, to protect the security of user data, Zoom has added an option to allow administrators to determine which regions of the data center their data is sent to.
This standard, which is not a trivial patch, “will take effect once all accounts are enabled with GCM. System-wide account enablement will take place on May 30, ” Zoom explains.
The Zoom download page only offers Zoom 4.6.12, but version 5.0 should be available before the end of this weekend.
