Video meet app Zoom sued by investor over security issues

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, on Tuesday alleged that Zoom failed to disclose some vulnerabilities and that the services did not provide end-to-end encryption.

Investor Michael Drieu filed the class action suit even as several organisations including the New York City's Department of Education started banning the usage of the app for remote learning and working from home purposes.

Zoom, which on Wednesday announced to hire Alex Stamos, former Chief Security Officer of Facebook, as an outside advisor, came under the scanner for security lapses after its usage skyrocketed due to the widespread COVID-19 restrictions across the world.

Zoom started facing criticism as reports of "Zoombombing" and other privacy issues started surfacing from different parts of the world.

"Zoomraiding" or "Zoombombing" refers to a type of online harassment in which hate speech, pornography or other inappropriate content is suddenly flashed by disrupting a video call on Zoom.

Several schools in the US earlier reported that unidentified persons accessed classes conducted through Zoom.

Zoom Founder and CEO Eric Yuan has already apologized for the privacy and security issues or Zoombombing being reported in his app.

Slammed for the lack of users privacy and security by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and cybersecurity experts, reports claimed last week that Zoom was also prone to hacking.

On April 1, Yuan laid out a 90-day plan to better identify, address, and fix issues proactively and improve the safety, privacy, and security of Zoom's platform.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Yuan announced the creation of a CISO Council and Advisory Board.

"One of the important commitments under our 90-day plan is to conduct a comprehensive security review of our platform, and third-party experts will be critical to this effort," Yuan said.