Part of TECHJAJA’S GUIDE TO WORKING FROM HOME
Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing tools of preference, and has now gained a lot of traction now that many companies have resorted to working from home due to the pandemic. On its website and in its security white paper claims that it supports end-to-end encryption for its meetings, but this may not be accurate and was just for marketing purposes.
End-to-end (E2E) encryption is intended to prevent data being read or secretly modified, other than by the true sender and recipient(s). The messages are encrypted by the sender but the third party does not have a means to decrypt them, and stores them encrypted.
Wikipedia
According to a new research from The Intercept it has been revealed that Zoom’s claims to support end-to-end encryption are not exactly true. The Intercept went further and asked a company spokesperson whether video meetings that take place on the platform are end-to-end encrypted, and the spokesperson said that “Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings.”
It should be noted that Zoom uses TLS encryption, the same standard that web browsers use to secure HTTPS websites. Practically, that means that data is encrypted between you and Zoom’s servers, similar to Facebook or Gmail content. But the term end-to-end encryption typically refers to protecting content between the users entirely with no company access at all, similar to Signal or WhatsApp. The company does not offer that level of encryption, making the use of “end-to-end” highly misleading.
The company is refuting the allegations that it’s misleading users. Zoom told The Intercept,“When we use the phrase ‘End to End’ in our other literature, it is in reference to the connection being encrypted from Zoom end point to Zoom end point,” and that “content is not decrypted as it transfers across the Zoom cloud.”
We have seen several governments use Zoom to conduct business to promote working from home and social distancing UK cabinet, as shown in the tweet below. Where the PM went ahead to publish the Cabinet’s Zoom ID number which would potentially pose a security risk.
Following the Covid pandemic in Uganda with 44 confirmed cases (as of writing this article), on 31st March, all Government Ministries, Agencies and Departments attended a Zoom meeting to discuss the government wide effort in combating Covid19. This shows how much companies a governments are trusting Zoom, but is it secure enough?
