Coronavirus social distancing and self-isolating guidelines exist to keep us safe. Everything else is shut down, canceled, and postponed in order for us not to be tempted stepping outside and going about our daily lives like nothing is happening. Luckily, there's Zoom.
Zoom is now king of all video conferencing platforms and is the go-to of many organizations, schools, and businesses in terms of communicating with everybody. But along with the surge of usage, the platform has become an easy target of cybercriminals.
A new report claims that new accounts on Zoom have been compromised. A hacker managed to steal the personal information of more than 500,000 users and sold them dirt-cheap on the dark web, according to cyber risk assessment experts at Cyble. Some are even given away completely free of charge.
Cyble managed to buy 530,000 Zoom accounts on an underground hacking forum for next to nothing. Among the stolen credentials, some of them belonged to several of the company's clients, which included Zoom host keys and personal meeting URLs.
The guys at Bleeping Computer also reached out to some of the owners of the hacked accounts, and they confirmed that the passwords were accurate. Although, at least one user stated that the password listed was an old one which he had already changed long since. It's possible that most of the passwords being sold on the dark web were old passwords, which likely were the same passwords used elsewhere by the owners.
Reusing passwords is a gigantic security issue that a lot of people are guilty of doing. Most people, if not all, are too lazy to create a new password for fear that they will forget it, so they end up using the same password on all their accounts.
The thing is, these old, reused passwords are already in the hands of cybercriminals and they're using it to get into accounts. For most people, they are completely oblivious of the risk. One way or another, hackers will try and infiltrate personal accounts -- there's no doubt about it. The only question is when.
The only way to safeguard your account, whether on Zoom or anywhere else, is to use a strong password that you've never used before. It must be unique. If you're worried about forgetting each of your passwords, simply use a password management app.
If you're a new Zoom user using one of your old passwords, you already know what to do.
