Zoom Meeting Involving Delaware Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester Hacked With Racist Messages
DOVER, Del. (CBS) -- A Zoom video call involving Delaware Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester and the Delaware Legislative Black Caucus was hacked Wednesday in a racist and sexist attack, according to the congresswoman. During the hack, a swastika, the N-word and pornography appeared on the screen.
The hack began approximately 26 minutes into the call.
Blunt Rochester responded to the hack in a video posted to YouTube Wednesday night.
"And so just about an hour ago I participated on a call with us from our state and a Congressman from another state, representatives from the Small Business Administration, really just trying to provide some information to Delawareans, and the Zoom call was pre-empted by somebody who thought they were doing something big and special by bombing our call. It was racist, it was sexist, it was immature. My first reaction was not to be upset - my first reaction was that we will not let hate take us down. I think that that is the message right now for this whole epidemic," Blunt Rochester says in the video.
"For those of you who don't get it yet -- this is about caring for each other, this is about love, this is about the reality that only what we do for love will last and that only if we stick together will we be strong and make it through this stronger. So to that person that was trying to destroy the positivity of what we were doing getting that information out to those small businesses -- you did not succeed."
A spokesperson for Blunt Rochester says the Zoom meeting was an information session with black small business owners, churches and nonprofits to encourage them to apply for the paycheck protection program.
That meeting, though, is just the latest example of what's become known as Zoom bombing, when someone up to no good disrupts a video conference on the now-widely popular app.
Wired editor and CBS News contributor Nicholas Thompson says hackers are taking advantage of the millions of novice Zoom users.
"They don't know the privacy settings. They don't know how to secure it. And so suddenly, they're vulnerable to monsters who want to interrupt and insult them," Thompson said.
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan spoke to CBS News recently about the growing problem. He says his company wasn't prepared for the influx of first-time users who didn't know about password protection.
"I think this is a mistake and lesson learned," Yuan said.
Last week Zoom released a new update in an effort to address security concerns. Using a password is now the default, and the new update includes new encryption.
It's unclear if the users hacked last night in our area were using the updated version.
CBS3's Jan Carabeo contributed to this report.