Zoom, the videoconferencing giant that’s been both hero and villain of the coronavirus age, sends user data to China, according to researchers.
. The Citizen Lab researchers dug further and found a handful of companies owned by Zoom operating under the name Ruanshi Software.
Not that Zoom is unaware of concerns about its links to China. As per a recent SEC filing: “We have a high concentration of research and development personnel in China, which could expose us to market scrutiny regarding the integrity of our solution or data security features.” Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, faced such scrutiny in the U.S., to the point it’s been barred from working with any American government organization and has seen its smartphone sales dwindle in the country.
Marczak and Scott-Railton also found that Zoom was using weaker encryption—the AES-128 algorithm rather than AES-256—to create those unique keys. And the keys were being shared in what’s known as Electronic Codebook mode, they found. When ECB mode is turned on, it’s possible to glean information from within the supposedly protected data without having to crack the keys. “it’s unclear just how Zoom is generating keys and whether its methods were secure.
And Marczak said that Zoom at least appeared to be working on addressing its security. In a blog post this week, Yuan said Zoom was pausing all feature development to focus on privacy and security. “The fact that Zoom recently voluntarily admitted that they don’t actually use end-to-end encryption, and committed themselves to make security and privacy improvements in their app, is an encouraging sign,” the researcher said.
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