As organizations move to remote work during the COVID-19 crisis, online communications have become essential. Online audio, web and video conferencing tool usage have increased 400% in only one month, according to AT&T. This new popularity for virtual meetings has also seen a multitude of security exploitation's on popular video conferencing sites like Zoom.
What Happened?
On April 14, 2020, over 500,000 Zoom account credentials were found for sale on the Dark Web. The information available for purchase include the user’s email address, password, personal meeting URL, and their Zoom Host Key — all being sold for less than a penny each. In some cases, the account credentials were being offered for free. The account details were obtained through credential stuffing attacks, where cyberthieves use emails and passwords previously exposed in other, non-related data breaches, to attempt access into other sites.
Should You Be Worried?
Credential stuffing attacks are successful when individuals use the same username, email and password for different accounts. With account access, hackers also gain visibility into the personal and financial information saved within. If you use the same email and password combination on more than one account, especially between work and personal accounts, you may be at risk. Protect yourself from account takeovers by updating all outdated and reused passwords with unique, hard to crack passcodes and saving them in a secure, encrypted password manager.
If you are part of the remote workforce, read more about the latest COVID-19 scams, plus tips to work safely from home.
4 Tips to Stay Protected
Use two-factor authentication. Requiring an additional level of account security can often thwart hackers from gaining access.
Invest in a password manager. Having one location to safeguard your hard-to-crack passwords alleviates the pressure to remember all logins and empowers you to update site passwords frequently.
Invest in Keyboard Encryption Software. Having Keyboard Encryption prevents Keystroke logging, often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing (the action of recording *logging* the keys struck on a keyboard, typically covertly, so that person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored).
Stay vigilant of software updates. Keep the apps on your devices up to date and refresh the passwords for each account.
Use VPN software to encrypt data. Protect your personal and business device against cyber vulnerabilities.
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