The Ministry of Home Affairs has warned users of the popular video conferencing platform Zoom, saying it is not a secure platform after concerns were raised over its security and privacy features. In an advisory issued by India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), users have been advised to prevent unauthorised entry in the conference room, prevent an unauthorised participant to carry out malicious acts during a conference, and avoid denial-of-service or DOS attacks by restricting users through password and granting authorised access only.
This could be a major setback for the company which has seen its daily users balloon to more than 200 million in March, from 10 million in December 2019. Also, Zoom was the second-fastest growing app in India after the government-promoted Aarogya Setu in terms of daily downloads.
The app has seen 5,00,000 daily downloads in just a week, the momentum gaining since people began working and studying from home due to the lockdown imposed to counter the spread of COVID-19 in March. Zoom has been facing a severe backlash over its privacy and security issues with many cases of “Zoom bombings’ and unauthorised intrusions reported during private calls and meetings. Recently, cyber risk assessment firm Cyble discovered that over 500,000 Zoom accounts are being sold on the dark web.
Earlier, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan had apologised for the security lapses that have rocked the app in recent weeks. Meanwhile, India is mulling to develop its own video conferencing app.
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, under its ‘Make in India’ initiative, has also announced an innovation challenge and asked Indian tech companies to come up with an encrypted video conferencing solution that works on all platforms.
