Porn Images Hijack Middle School Zoom Teaching Session: GBI

COLUMBUS, GA — A class of seventh-graders at a Columbus middle school had their virtual learning session hijacked by an online intruder who shared pornographic. The FBI calls it Zoom-bombing when someone takes over a virtual meeting and does something inappropriate.

About 20 Veterans Memorial Middle School students saw images of a naked woman Wednesday morning when their online social studies class was “Zoom-bombed,” WTVM reports.

Mitch Zamora, whose daughter was in the class, told the TV station, “She saw what looked like the exorcist’s face and thought someone was just playing a joke, trying to scare her. But then, she heard a foreign language and saw a picture of a naked woman’s body and her bottom part.”

Charles Kicklighter, assistant special agent at the Charge Georgia Cyber Crimes Center, said reports of these incidents have nearly doubled compared to a year ago.

“You can’t say it’s all because of COVID, but it is certainly a factor,” he said. Online learning under way "widens the pool for predators looking for children. It gives them a wider hunting ground.”

The Muscogee County School district said in a statement that employees will implement additional safety protocols to ensure a safe learning environment with minimal disruptions.

"We encourage parents to connect with their students about safe practices during virtual learning: do not share personal information, login credentials, or passwords,” the district said.

The FBI recommends said Zoom-bombing can be a crime. The agency suggested these steps to mitigate teleconference hijacking threats:

• Do not make meetings or classrooms public. In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guests.
• Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people.
• Manage screensharing options. In Zoom, change screensharing to “Host Only.”
• Ensure users are using the updated version of remote access/meeting applications. IN a recent security update, the teleconference software provider added passwords by default for meetings and disabled the ability to randomly scan for meetings to join.
• Ensure your organization’s telework policy or guide addresses requirements for physical and information security.