Hateful Zoom Bomb Disrupts Agoura Hills Meeting

AGOURA HILLS, CA — A virtual project forum led by the Agoura Hills Planning Commission was abruptly cut short Tuesday night after hackers broke in and displayed racial slurs across the screen.

About 30 minutes into the meeting discussing a proposed professional office project on the lot between 29451-29555 Canwood Street, hackers began flashing pages containing a number of slurs across participants' screens. Screens were suddenly wallpapered with the N word, a swastika, and a derogatory word for women, City Manager Nathan Hamburger told Patch. Hamburger said that the hackers also told participants that their emails had been hacked.

At that point, everyone got off the call. The meeting will be rescheduled for the near future, according to a city statement.

Hamburger said that the city has advised its staff and everyone present on the call to change their email passwords, though city IT staff have not reported detecting any strange activity.

"The whole thing is disturbing and shocking," said a participant on the call, who confirmed Hamburger's account and also reported that the hackers called out one of the city's planning commissioners by name.

The city has reported the event as a hate crime to the Lost Hills-Malibu Sheriff's Station. The unit's cyber crimes is currently investigating the incident, Sgt. Painter of the Lost Hills Detectives Bureau told Patch. Like Hamburger, Painter said that this is the first time he has ever seen a hate-related Zoom bomb take place during an official city meeting.

"The City sincerely apologizes to everyone that attended tonight’s virtual development public forum for the office building project on Canwood Street," an official city email from Wednesday morning reads. "We are deeply saddened and disturbed by the racial and insensitive acts of the hackers. Although public forums are developer-sponsored meetings for the community to engage and ask questions, the City will be working closely with the developer to reschedule the presentation, and most importantly to protect against this from happening again."

The meeting was originally scheduled to discuss a proposal to develop five small, single-story buildings on 150,367 square foot parcel on Canwood Street, according to a city notice. The project is being developed by Martin Teitelbaum and Hugh Cassar of the project development firm Ladyface Vista, LP.

"I have a very excellent relationship with the city, and we're gonna move forward as partners," Teitelbaum said. "We're going to move together as partners and get past this."