End to End Encryption will be available to Zoom users
Zoom is now one of the most used video conferencing software because of the new normal set up that we need to adapt. The company has finally announced that it will offer more robust security encryption for all Zoom users paid or free.
The sought-after meeting software has recently faced criticism because of the security issues that it faced recently; the Zoom Bombing attack is one of them.
Previously, the company’s CEO Mr. Eric Yuan stated that to still help the FBI with local law enforcement cases that use Zoom for criminal activities, they would exclude free calls from end to end encryption. They have changed their decision after they spoke with civil liberties organizations, child safety, encryption experts, government representatives, and users.
The popularity of Zoom has skyrocketed after the implementation of lockdowns due to coronavirus; they are now seeing 300 million daily users just from 10 million back in December.
Free users that are seeking to access E2EE will have to have a one-time process that will prompt the user for additional information such as verifying a phone number via a text message.
Zoom stated that they would not force users E2EE features to their free users as they will give a choice to both free and paid accounts to enable it for their meetings.
In this Enhanced Encryption offering, the encryption keys are created on the Zoom’s servers. They will be distributed to the participants of the meeting. Each key is randomly generated for each session and then deleted. A meeting participant may generate the encryption key and uses public-key cryptography to transmit this key to the other meeting participants. Moreover, the key will not be visible in the Zoom’s server.
Zoom plans to begin the early beta version of the E2EE feature in July 2020. This new feature will be optional as it limits some meeting functionality. The meeting host can toggle E2EE on or off per meeting.
According to Mr. Yuan, Zoom users will still be able to use their current and default encryption: AES 256 GCM transport encryption.
