A virtual meeting organized by the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) yesterday to unveil ‘Operational guideline with health protocol for tourism sector’ was interrupted after an unknown user bombed it with a porn video.
The porn video popped up on the screen as Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Bhattarai was giving his speech during the Zoom meeting.
Username ‘Harris’ took control of the meeting and played a porn video just as Minister Bhattarai had started to speak. The explicit video lasted for a whole minute.
The virtual meeting, being attended by at least 200 participants including government officials, tourism entrepreneurs and journalists, was disrupted after the incident.
Zoom-bombing, however, is not new as people across the globe have been facing similar problems since an individual or a group can enter the video conferencing app without the host’s permission.
On April 15, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs had issued an advisory on the use of Zoom saying the use of the platform is “not safe.”
A multitude of security loopholes related to Zoom as well as its dubious privacy policy have been reported and emphasised by countries such as the US and Taiwan.
Previously, the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US had cautioned the users on using Zoom for their daily video meetings as malicious users have used Zoom-bombing to share offensive or unsavoury images and hate speeches.
Even in Nepal, a meeting of Rastriya Bank, online classes by schools and colleges, and several webinars have already been Zoom-bombed with explicit images and videos.
Nepal Government has insisted on using the app despite widespread calls to not use the app for official purposes due to its security lapses and with numerous Nepali developers ready with required tools.
The Ministry of General Administration and Good Governance has even made it mandatory for all government employees and ministries to use Zoom for official meetings, despite readily having Nepali software for such meetings.