Members of parliament started their Thursday video conferences while pornographic video material unexpectedly surfaced during an official online session on their computer screens.
That’s when Parliament’s Programs Committee, chaired by National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise, had to meet on the online platform Zoom on Thursday at 9am to discuss the parliamentary program.
However, shortly after signing up for the online meeting, and MPs were still discussing the issues on the agenda, everyone was caught off guard when the unwanted pornographic material began to appear.
It caused a stir with the MPs with some screaming screaming: “Oh no. What is happening? Take down, take down the video! ”
However, the images continued to appear.
One MP suggested that the meeting’s video line be turned off and that only the audio be continued.
Concerned parliamentary staff said at the time that they would immediately contact their Zoom consultants on the matter.
Modise urgently suggested that the online session be adjourned until the technical issue was sorted out.
Zoom Bombing
This is not the first time this form of attack has been seen, with more and more businesses working from home, many have chosen to use Zoom Video conferencing.
The term to define the attack is ‘zoom bombing’ which allows people to guess the Personal Meeting URL which grants access to the meeting.
Zoom has recently released a patch to mitigate this risk and also sent out a message on how to protect against such an attack.
Forbes recently reported on the issue some users are facing, they received a message from a Zoom spokesperson stating:
“For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining. We also encourage users to report any incidents of this kind directly so we can take appropriate action.”
“Also try to avoid using your personal meeting room for public meetings. If someone gets access to your personal meeting ID and the personal link, they could potentially then join any meeting in the room at any time.”
