Before a Thursday Zoom meeting set to feature Federal Reserve Bank Governor Christopher Waller could start, one of the roughly 220 meeting participants started displaying pornographic images.
According to Reuters, a reporter for the outlet was on the call and witnessed a participant labelled “Dan” displaying graphic pornographic images.
Brent Tjarks, executive director of meeting host Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, confirmed to both Reuters and Bloomberg that the meeting “was the victim of a teleconferencing or Zoom hijacking.”
“We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret,” he said. “We have had various programs and this is something that we have never had happen to us.”
Tjarks suspects that one of the security switches used to mute Zoom meeting participants was not set correctly. Reuters said the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America decided to cancel the meeting in consultation with the Federal Reserve Bank – the central bank of the U.S., tasked with setting monetary policy.
Zoom became a popular way for people to connect during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, and soon there were reports of “Zoom bombing” incidents such as this one. Additionally, settings issues resulted in the infamous “cat lawyer” Zoom video shared here by the Associated Press.
“Most attacks exploit publicly available Zoom links. Depending on your personal settings, however, some ostensibly private meetings may also be vulnerable,” said Occidental College, which provides settings tips for preventing attacks.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation even issued a warning about the teleconferencing service in 2020. However, Reuters noted that Zoom introduced major upgrades after the “Zoom bombing” reports.
“We have been deeply upset to hear about these types of incidents, and Zoom strongly condemns such behavior,” said Zoom spokesman Matt Nagel in a statement cited by Reuters. “We take meeting disruptions extremely seriously and, where appropriate, we work closely with law enforcement authorities.”
According to prepared remarks from Waller released by the Federal Reserve Bank, he intended to address inflation and the economic outlook.
“Last month we received a barrage of data that has challenged my view in January that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) was making significant progress in moderating economic activity and reducing inflation,” said Waller’s speech notes. “I’m not the only one whose outlook has shifted. Since the end of January, financial market participants have revised their outlooks in a way that has led them to mark up their expectations for the federal funds rate at the end of 2023 by about a half percentage point.”
Bloomberg reported that, after the Fed released Waller’s speech, it said in a statement that “there are technical difficulties with Governor Waller’s virtual event and it has been canceled.”
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