After Zoom’s rising star was arrested by new reports of ‘Zoom-bombing’ and security deficits, the company is acting quickly to allay user fears.
An announcement today shows that the platform will take the unusual step of allowing paying users to choose their own data center of origin for real-time meetings. Those using the free tier will still be subject to the caprices of the platform, where some allege that traffic was “unintentionally “ routed through Chinese servers.
Zoom uses a system of data center regions. Spokespersons explained that a default region is typically always locked in, but in within the company’s robust cloud architecture, “regional selections will be honored” for those who pay for access – for instance, school districts and other institutional customers relying on Zoom for crucial coronavirus operations.
Reports around this behavior show that users were concerned about some meetings getting routed to China in a way that didn’t gel with regular protocol.
“On April 3rd, (a report released by Citizen Lab described) how Zoom’s encryption scheme sometimes used keys generated by servers in China,” writes Jay Peters at The Verge today. “That could mean, in theory, that Chinese officials could demand Zoom disclose those encryption keys to the government.”
The text of the Citizen Lab report offers more detail, for instance, this observation of AES encryption operations:
“The AES-128 keys, which we verified are sufficient to decrypt Zoom packets intercepted in Internet traffic, appear to be generated by Zoom servers, and in some cases, are delivered to participants in a Zoom meeting through servers in China, even when all meeting participants, and the Zoom subscriber’s company, are outside of China.”
This is the kind of thing that the choice-of-center move is supposed to address. Other current Zoom projects include a feature freeze to enable engineers to focus on encryption and security promotion.
After a dip April 7, Zoom (ZM) stock is back up to around $140 this morning.
Will this videoconferencing leader continue to outperform its rivals? The answer may have to do with how quickly Zoom moves to neutralize security threats – and how that plays out with its institutional users.
