This Friday our story of the week goes to the virtual bond hearing of the 17-year-old boy accused of hacking Twitter, which was interrupted by Zoombombers playing loud music and a pornographic video. Independent security journalist Brian Krebs, who attended the hearing, summed it up on Twitter by saying: “Judges holding hearings over Zoom need to get a clue.”
Given the subject of the hearing, hosted over Zoom by the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, it should undoubtedly have been assessed as high risk but Krebs said on Twitter: “Predictably, the Zoom hearing for the 17-year-old alleged Twitter hacker in Fla. was bombed multiple times, with the final bombing of a pornhub clip ending the zoom portion of the proceedings.”
He added: “How the judge in charge of the proceeding didn’t think to enable settings that would prevent people from taking over the screen is beyond me. My guess is he didn’t know he could.”
Fortune Magazine writer Jen Wieczner, also in attendance, said: “Well perhaps unsurprisingly the accused Twitter hacker-Bitcoin thief’s first (virtual) hearing was shut down within 25 minutes due to relentless Zoombombing. (It ended a minute after this when someone screenshared a Porn Hub video.)”
Showing a video of her screen, Wieczner said: “Here was the zillionth interruption that finally resulted in the Judge announcing they will do a password protected in the future!”
This is not a reflection on Zoom, which has in recent months introduced a raft of additional free security measures including the ability to password protect meetings to ensure that only recipients of an invite are able to enter the room.
Florida was also the setting for the first Zoom trial in July. The historic and uninterrupted one-day Florida trial was a dispute heard in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida between People’s Trust Insurance Company and Yusem Corchero et al.