It seems that hackers can infiltrate lots of systems in various manners. For example, this month, one hacker managed to infiltrate various conference rooms from the world, with the aid of video-conference equipment. He managed to control the cameras from his home, zooming in and out, basically doing anything he wanted.
These cameras are very professional, and they have a very powerful zoom. He could have easily listened to conversations or zoom in order to take a closer look at a file. The “hacker” was HD Moore, a chief security officer at Rapid7, a Boston based company, which tries to find software flaws for various companies, in order to fix them. He discovered that the video-conference equipment can be easily hacked.
Videoconference Tools Affected By Hackers (Source: tulane.edu)
The large corporations spend billions of dollars each year in order to make sure that their servers, computers, and laptops are secure. They are very careful about the information which their employees send via e-mail, and so on. However, they do not care too much about the video-conference equipment, and about the fact that someone could obtain valuable information by spying on a conference.
Mike Tuchen, chief executive of Rapid7 stated that Mr. Moore was able to infiltrate the board rooms of some of the biggest companies in the world, and that a hacker would have easily been able to steal important information.
Videoconference Tools Affected By Hackers (Source: cdn.thetechjournal.com)
In the past, the conferences were phone based, but now, since the development of the internet, they are online based, and thus, they can be hacked more easily. These means are excellent when it comes to quality, but they are very bad when it comes to security. The video-conference devices are very expensive, and they are very performing. They have crystal clear quality, and they can detect sounds very easily. However, the problem is that they are not secure and that they can be easily hacked. It is unknown if a hacker managed to hack a video-conference yet, because none of the companies mentioned it.
