PCEC News
Computer Science Professor Advises Local Schools after Zoom Meeting Hack
September 11, 2020
WYOMING, Mich.- Reports surfaced on Wednesday that a zoom classroom meeting at Godfrey-Lee Public School was interrupted by a non-student participant.
The Wyoming Public Safety and Godfrey-Lee Public School released a statement Thursday regarding the incident that states in part:
"The District and the Department have opened investigations into the matter. Wyoming police investigators have developed significant leads and have identified a possible suspect who was acting from outside the State of Michigan. A full criminal investigation will be completed and turned over to the Kent County Prosecutor’s Office for consideration of charges.
While there was no physical danger to any students given the remote nature of the meeting, the School District and the Public Safety Department see this unlawful behavior as extremely serious. Safety, security, and a proper learning environment in the classroom, be it physical or virtual, is of paramount importance.
Superintendent Polston and his staff have implemented additional cyber security measures to prevent a recurrence of such an incident. The Wyoming police officer assigned to the District as a School Resource Officer is working closely with the Superintendent and his staff to keep students protected from this and any other threat to school safety and order."
13 ON YOUR SIDE spoke to Wyoming Police Lieutenant Eric Wiler about Wednesday's incident, and the challenges this type of occurrence presents to law enforcement.
"When your kids are on these zoom meetings, make sure you know what's going on," he says. "With all the technology that's out there and the access that people have to things its easy for them to do bad things and hard to track down who they are."
Which leads to the question: How vulnerable are virtual classrooms to
cyber hacking?
Cyber expert Vijay Bhuse is an associate professor of computer
science at Grand Valley State University. He says because Zoom gained so much popularity so quickly
among users, it's possible the software's engineering team did not
test the software's security measures as well as they could have with
more time.
"Any software that you connect to the internet is susceptible to hacking. The thing with zoom is it became so popular so quickly it is possible that they may not have tested everything extensively."
Both Wyoming Public Safety and Professor Vijay Bhuse advise parents and teachers to pay close attention to zoom classroom meetings. They ask parents and teachers to react quickly to end the classroom meeting, in the event that they experience anything odd during the call.
"If you are ever in a situation where something like this happens to you, try to call us right away so that we can get working on it," say Lt. Wiler.
Professor Vijay says school districts to use all of the Zoom security features available, and says to not share zoom meeting invite links with anyone that is not a trusted attendee. He reminds everyone that uses Zoom that the vulnerabilities for hacking still exist.
"Zoom hacking is the equivalent of someone walking into the classroom, and it is definitely an invasion of privacy," says Professor Vijay. "Zoom has been hacked before. This isn't the first time and this won't be the last time either."
Original article published by WZZM13.