Zoom Video Communications Inc. said Wednesday it was upgrading the encryption features on its video conferencing app to quell safety concerns as its users surged by 50 percent in the past three weeks.Zoom now has over 300 million daily users after adding 100 million in the last 22 days, the company said, even as it faces a barrage of criticism from cyber security experts and users alike over bugs in its codes and the lack of end-to-end encryption of its chat sessions.The use of Zoom has soared with corporate offices, political parties, school districts, organizations and millions across the world working from home after lockdowns were enforced to slow the spread of the coronavirus.The app’s issues, including “Zoombombing” incidents where uninvited guests crash meetings, led to several companies, schools and governments to stop using the platform.In response, the company said it would be rolling out a new version of the app, Zoom 5.0 within the week.The company, which competes with Microsoft Teams and Cisco’s Webex has also launched a 90-day plan to improve the app and appointed former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser.Zoom said it had made several changes to its user interface, including offering password protection and giving more controls to meeting hosts to check unruly participants.To account for criticism that the company had routed some data through Chinese servers, Zoom said an account admin can now choose data center regions for their meetings.Zoom shares closed up nearly 5 percent at $150.25 on Wednesday. 
  
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Far-right computer hackers have published nearly 25,000 email addresses allegedly belonging to several major organizations fighting the coronavirus pandemic, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the World Bank.The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activities, has yet to confirm the addresses are genuine but said that the hackers posted the email addresses across far-right messaging and chat sites, as well as Twitter, this week.“Using the data, far-right extremists were calling for a harassment campaign while sharing conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic,” SITE Executive Director Rita Katz said. “The distribution of these alleged email credentials was just another part of a monthslong initiative across the far right to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic.”It is unclear where the hackers got the email addresses. Other victims of the hacks include the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Gates Foundation; and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research center in the Chinese city where the COVID-19 outbreak began in December.While those affected by the security breach did not comment on the specifics of the case, NIH and the Gates Foundation both said they consistently monitor data security and take appropriate action.A Twitter spokeswoman said the company is taking action to remove in bulk any links that send users to far-right websites where the alleged email addresses can be found.An Australian cybersecurity expert, Robert Potter, told The Washington Post that the WHO’s password security is appalling and that he was able to get into its computer system simply by using email addresses the WHO posted on the internet.“Forty-eight people have ‘password’ as their password,” Potter said, adding that others used their own first name or the word “changeme.”He said the right-wingers may have been able to buy the WHO passwords on what is called the dark web, a part of the internet that is not seen by search engines.Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon College in North Carolina who monitors right-wing extremism online, said neo-Nazis and white supremacists are looking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to stir up violence, chaos and anti-Semitism, hoping it will all lead to a collapse of society and a white power takeover.“The fantasizing about it is not limited. They are really doing that to a great extent — openly fantasizing about how this is the event they’ve been waiting for, this is going to bring about the societal collapse they all hope for … bringing down infrastructure and so on. That’s all fantasy/hopefulness on their part.”Squire said the password hack may be part of an effort to get people to read the WHO or Gates Foundation emails to look for what the extremists believe are conspiracies surrounding the pandemic, including far-right theories that the coronavirus was created and deliberately released from the Chinese or that COVID-19 is part of a Jewish plot.Masood Farivar contributed to this report.
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France’s parliament votes next week on plans to use a controversial tracing app to help fight the coronavirus, as the country eyes easing its lockdown next month.French Digital Affairs Minister Cedric O says the downloadable app would notify smartphone users when they cross people with COVID-19, helping authorities track and reduce the spread of the pandemic.In a video on the ruling party’s Facebook page, O said the so-called “Stop COVID” app will fully respect people’s liberties, and will be completely voluntary and anonymous. It also will be temporary — lasting only as long as the pandemic, he added.A man rides his bike in an empty street during a nationwide confinement to counter the COVID-19 in Paris, April 21, 2020.The government wants to launch the app on May 11, the date it has set to begin easing a two-month lockdown in the country. It initially announced a parliamentary debate on the technology, but that’s been changed to a vote, after major pushback from lawmakers.The app’s critics include ruling party member Guillaume Chiche, who told French TV the app would reveal people’s health status and lead to discrimination and exclusion.He’s not the only one worried.”We think that it is very dangerous for the government to say to French people that the solution will be this kind of application,” said Benoit Piedallu, a member of La Quadrature du Net, an advocacy group defending digital rights and freedoms.The potential problems he sees range from chances the app could infringe on individual liberties, to whether it would actually work effectively.”We think that the digital application is not the correct answer to this problem,” Piedallu said. “The government should buy masks, the government should open new hospitals. … There are a lot of other solutions than an application.”A recent poll showed eight in 10 French respondents said they would be willing to download the app. But Piedallu believes the numbers of those actually using it will likely be much smaller, and many seniors —who are among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus — don’t have smartphones.France isn’t the only European country working on tracing apps and sparking similar rights debates, including in neighboring Germany. Reports say the French government is also pushing Apple to allow the app to work on its iPhones without built-in privacy measures.  
 
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The CCTV footage from a Dutch business park shows a man in a black cap pouring the contents of a white container at the base of a cellular radio tower. Flames burst out as the man jogs back to his Toyota to flee into the evening.
It’s a scene that’s been repeated dozens of times in recent weeks in Europe, where conspiracy theories linking new 5G mobile networks and the coronavirus pandemic are fueling arson attacks on cell towers.
Popular beliefs and conspiracy theories that wireless communications pose a threat have long been around, but the global spread of the virus at the same time that countries were rolling out fifth generation wireless technology has seen some of those false narratives amplified.
Officials in Europe and the U.S. are watching the situation closely and pushing back, concerned that attacks will undermine vital telecommunications links at a time they’re most needed to deal with the pandemic.
“I’m absolutely outraged, absolutely disgusted, that people would be taking action against the very infrastructure that we need to respond to this health emergency,” Stephen Powis, medical director of the National Health Service in England, said in early April.
Some 50 fires targeting cell towers and other equipment have been reported in Britain this month, leading to three arrests. Telecom engineers have been abused on the job 80 times, according to trade group Mobile UK, making the U.K. the nucleus of the attacks. Photos and videos documenting the attacks are often overlaid with false commentary about COVID-19. Some 16 have been torched in the Netherlands, with attacks also reported in Ireland, Cyprus, and Belgium.
Posts threatening to attack phone masts were receiving likes on Facebook. One post in an anti-vaccine group on April 12 shared a photo of a burned phone mast with the quote, “Nobody wants cancer & covid19. Stop trying to make it happen or every pole and mobile store will end up like this one.”
The trend received extra attention in Britain when a tower supplying voice and data traffic to a Birmingham field hospital treating coronavirus patients was among those targeted.
“It’s heart-rending enough that families cannot be there at the bedside of loved ones who are critically ill,” Nick Jeffery, CEO of wireless carrier Vodafone UK, said on LinkedIn. “It’s even more upsetting that even the small solace of a phone or video call may now be denied them because of the selfish actions of a few deluded conspiracy theorists.”
False narratives around 5G and the coronavirus have been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media. They vary widely from claims that the coronavirus is a coverup for 5G deployment to those that say new 5G installations have created the virus.
“To be concerned that 5G is somehow driving the COVID-19 epidemic is just wrong,” Dr. Jonathan Samet, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health who chaired a World Health Organization committee that researched cell phone radiation and cancer. “I just don’t find any plausible way to link them.”
Anti-5G activists are undeterred.
Susan Brinchman, director of the Center for Electrosmog Prevention, a nonprofit campaigning against “environmental electromagnetic pollution,” says that people have a right to be concerned about 5G and links to COVID-19. “The entire 5G infrastructure should be dismantled and turned off,” she said by email.
But there’s no evidence that wireless communications – whether 5G or earlier versions – harm the immune system, said Myrtill Simko, scientific director of SciProof International in Sweden, who has spent decades researching the matter.
The current wave of 5G theories dates back to January, when a Belgian doctor suggested a link to COVID-19. Older variations were circulating before that, mostly revolving around cellphone radiation causing cancer, spreading on Reddit forums, Facebook pages and YouTube channels. Even with daily wireless use among vast majority of adults, the National Cancer Institute has not seen an increase in brain tumors.
The theories gained momentum in 2019 from Russian state media outlets, which helped push them into U.S. domestic conversation, disinformation experts say.
Ryan Fox, who tracks disinformation as chief innovation officer at AI company Yonder, said he noticed an abnormal spike last year in mentions around 5G across Russian state media, with most of the narratives playing off people’s fears around 5G and whether it could cause cancer.
“Were they the loudest voice at that time and did they amplify this conspiracy enough that it helped fuel its long-term success? Yes,” he said.  
The conspiracy theories have also been elevated by celebrities including actor Woody Harrelson who shared a video claiming people in China were taking down a 5G tower. It was actually a Hong Kong “smart lamppost” cut down by pro-democracy protesters in August over China surveillance fears. British TV host Eamonn Holmes gave credence to the theories on a talk show, drawing a rebuke from regulators.
“I want to be very clear here,” European Commission spokesman Johannes Bahrke said Friday, as the arson toll rose daily. “There is no geographic or any other correlation between the deployment of 5G and the outbreak of the virus.” 
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Australia says Facebook and Google will soon have to pay news outlets for their content.  Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced Monday that the government’s watchdog group, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, will unveil a mandatory code of conduct by July that will address the disparity between news outlets and internet giants when it comes to online advertising revenue. Facebook and Google receive nearly all online advertising spent in Australia.   The new rules are being undertaken after 18 months of talks with the U.S. tech companies over a voluntary code of conduct failed to yield an agreement. Australia would be the third western country in the world to impose such a plan, following similar moves by Spain and France.   Australian media companies have lost millions of dollars in advertising revenue in just the last month alone thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.   Facebook issued a statement that it was “disappointed” by the government’s decision, noting that it had begun a multi-million dollar investment in Australia’s news industry, while Google said it will continue to work with Australian news outlets, the ACCC and government to develop a code of conduct.  
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A senior cybersecurity official with the FBI said on Thursday that foreign government hackers have broken into companies conducting research into treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz told participants in an online panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute that the bureau had recently seen state-backed hackers poking around a series of health care and research institutions.”We certainly have seen reconnaissance activity, and some intrusions, into some of those institutions, especially those that have publicly identified themselves as working on COVID-related research,” she said.Ugoretz said it made sense for institutions working on promising treatments or a potential vaccine to tout their work publicly. However, she said, “The sad flipside is that it kind of makes them a mark for other nation-states that are interested in gleaning details about what exactly they’re doing and maybe even stealing proprietary information that those institutions have.”Ugoretz said that state-backed hackers had often targeted biopharmaceutical industry but said “it’s certainly heightened during this crisis.” She did not name specific countries or identify targeted organizations.”Medical research organizations and those who work for them should be vigilant against threat actors seeking to steal intellectual property or other sensitive data related to America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Bill Evanina, Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “Now is the time to protect the critical research you’re conducting.”The FBI declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had no immediate comment.    
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A mobile alert created in South Africa is putting information about coronavirus into the hands of millions. Praekelt.org has gone global … raising awareness about COVID-19. VOA’s Salem Solomon has the story.
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A mobile alert created in South Africa is putting information about coronavirus into the hands of millions. Praekelt.org has gone global … raising awareness about COVID-19. VOA’s Salem Solomon has the story.
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Like so many other workers around the world affected by a COVID-19 lockdown, the team of scientists that operates the U.S. space agency (NASA) probe Curiosity — currently on the surface of Mars — has been forced to do its work from home. Since March 20, the team, normally based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California, has been forced to direct the rover while working separately from their homes. Programming each sequence of actions for the rover may involve 20 or so people developing and testing commands in one place while chatting with dozens of others located elsewhere. In anticipation of what they would need to make that happen from home, the team assembled headsets, monitors and other equipment in advanced.  Some adaptations were needed as well. Rover operators rely on special three-dimensional goggles to help them drive Curiosity over the Martian landscape. But those can only be run using JPL computers, so researchers were forced to rely on simple 3D glasses, similar to the kind you might get at a 3D movie, to view images on laptops. The team found that it could do its job using multiple video conferences and messaging apps. Two days after they set up remotely, the team directed Curiosity to drill for a rock sample at a Martian location called “Edinburgh.” Science operations team chief Carrie Bridge says she still checks in on the team to make sure things are running smoothly, but does so virtually, calling into as many as four videoconferences at the same time.  
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When COVID-19 hit Washington, D.C., and health officials said people had to stay 2 meters apart, Broad Branch Market owner Tracy Stannard knew it meant an end to business as usual.Customers had been packing the store to stock up.”We realized that it was getting a little too risky to have so many people in the market,” Stannard said. “We wanted to keep people outside.”But she also wanted to keep selling groceries.So she turned to Starship Technologies’ delivery robots.”The bots seemed like a great option,” she said.At a time when human contact is considered a health hazard, robots may be more useful than ever. Though their potential is huge, robots are not quite ready to take on the role, experts said.WATCH: Delivery robotsSorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
FILE – A six-wheeled ground delivery robot from Starship Technologies shares the sidewalk with pedestrians at DuPont Circle in Washington, Feb. 20, 2017.But they’re a help, she added. Without them, “it would be harder. I would be driving a lot, for sure.”And customers appreciate that the bots let them keep their distance.”I love the fact that it’ll come right to my house and that I don’t even have to go into the store,” customer Rob Okum said. “It’s actually super easy and it makes it a lot safer to keep social distancing.”Elsewhere, Starship’s robots are delivering restaurant takeout. Other companies, including Kiwibot, Postmates and, of course, Amazon, are also doing various kinds of robot deliveries.Though this seems like an opportune moment, automated deliveries are not taking off.”There’s a lot of use for robotics right now, but I’m not seeing a tremendous growth in that particular application,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the trade group Association for Advancing Automation.Robot deliveries are only available in a few small areas where the sidewalks and streets aren’t too bumpy and the local authorities don’t mind letting them share the pavement. There are also plenty of other ways to have stuff delivered, Burnstein said.Dirty and dangerousRobots have always been best-suited for dirty and dangerous work, he said, and the COVID-19 pandemic is providing some new opportunities.Disinfecting robots are zapping germs in a Belgian hospital and spraying disinfectant in the Hong Kong subway.”If you are in a hospital or office or a warehouse, you probably would like to have a robot do the disinfecting so that people don’t have to go in there and do that,” Burnstein said. “(The robot) makes it safe before the people come into work.”Robots are helping health workers stay healthy by limiting their interactions with sick patients.They are delivering food and medicine in India and Thailand.In Italy, a robot with a camera and touchscreen sits by a patient’s bedside, keeping an eye on them so nurses can keep their distance. Limited applicationsBut these remain isolated examples. Experts say robots could be doing much more.”There’s so much potential you can do here,” Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Howie Choset said. “Unfortunately, we have not had the resources to develop robots that are needed for this particular pandemic.”Choset said interest in developing tools waxes and wanes with the latest crisis. For example, he said, his research group developed a snake-like robot that could move through tight spaces to search for victims in collapsed buildings. It helped the Red Cross in Mexico City after the 2017 earthquake.”But we were doing that on a shoestring budget. That robot, no pun intended, was on its last legs” until the earthquake hit, he said. Then, “everybody wanted that robot. And then a couple of weeks after that, people forgot.”Choset said the robot needs more work, but it’s been hard to find the funding.It’s not just academics. The robotics industry as a whole is struggling.”I’m seeing robotics companies shut down, even in the last month, but particularly in the last year, because they were too early for the markets,” said Andra Keay, managing director of trade group Silicon Valley Robotics.Investors are looking for big returns fast, but many companies are not making money yet. It may be 10 or 15 years before they perfect their technology and business models.”We really needed patient capital in this new wave of robotics,” she said.For now, however, these futuristic workers remain in the future.”Yes, this is robots’ moment,” Choset said, “but we’re going to make do with what we have.” 
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At a time when human contact is considered a health hazard, robots may be more useful than ever. From helping with the shopping to keeping healthcare workers safe, the COVID-19 pandemic could be the moment for robots to shine. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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U.S. lawmakers and rights groups are raising concerns about privacy protections and civil liberties as health authorities study China, South Korea and other nations for insights into deploying big data in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.  So far, the United States has made limited use of available data to fight the outbreak. Instead of using cell phone location data to track down individuals exposed to the virus, public health officials have relied on such data to monitor trends and hot spots.  But once the number of new COVID-19 cases levels off and the Trump administration and governors move to lift lockdowns and other social distancing measures, the contact tracing techniques used with varying degrees of success in other countries are likely to gain currency in the U.S.   
 
Contact tracing is a public health procedure of identifying people who have come into contact with an infected person and follow-up gathering of additional information on these people.   Jennifer Granick, the surveillance and cybersecurity counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said contact tracing could be useful when testing for exposure to the virus becomes  more widely available. But she warned that any use of phone records must be transparent and voluntary, and the data must be destroyed once the crisis is over.“When data collection is useful for an important public good, we have to make sure we can protect privacy as much as possible and get effective use of the tool or the data,” Granick said during a press call with reporters last week.  In the two years since the European Union implemented a landmark privacy regulation known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers have been pressing for similar protections for American consumers. Now, the heightened focus on the use of data in the fight against the COVID-19 virus has pushed concerns about privacy protections to the forefront.  Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.On Thursday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation convened the first congressional “paper hearing” via the internet on big data and the coronavirus. In his opening statement, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the committee chairman, said any use of personal data must come with privacy protections.  
 
“Reducing privacy risks begins with understanding how consumers’ location data — and any other information — is being collected when tracking compliance with social distancing measures,” Wicker said. “Equally important is understanding how that data is anonymized to remove all personally identifiable information and prevent individuals from being re-identified.”Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asks a question during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State, the top Democrat on the panel, warned against “hasty decisions that will sweep up massive, unrelated datasets.” “And we must guard against vaguely defined and non-transparent government initiatives with our personal data,” Cantwell said.  “Because rights and data surrendered temporarily during an emergency can become very difficult to get back.” Last year, both Wicker and Cantwell introduced privacy bills that would give American consumers privacy protections similar to the EU’s GDPR.  
 
The U.S. drive to make greater use of cell phone location data to contain the virus stems in part from similar efforts in China, South Korea, Singapore, Israel and elsewhere.  People wearing face masks look at their cellphones at Beijing Capital International Airport, as the country is hit by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, in Beijing, China March 16, 2020.In China, the government collected cell phone location data on millions of residents with the goal of identifying individuals exposed to a person infected with the virus.  Using the infected people’s location records, the government then identified, tested and, if necessary, quarantined people.   This was one of several methods China used to bring the virus outbreak under control.  “This kind of tracking is part of what China has been doing in its seemingly successful effort to suppress the virus, which has fed the appeal of such tracking,” the ACLU said in a white paper released last week.  In the paper, the ACLU highlighted several problems with this method.For one, cell site location information and GPS data are not accurate enough to pinpoint whether two people were recently in “close contact” with each other.    As the Chinese discovered, cell site location data “generated too many false positives,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU.  GPS data “is probably good enough to tell you that you were near a mosque or an abortion clinic … but not good enough to figure out who you were close enough to potentially be exposed to COVID,” Stanley said. Other problems: computer algorithms are not always reliable and cell phone location data are scattered among “a whole ecosystem of privacy-invading companies,” Stanley said.   Lee Nak-yon, South Korean former prime minister and a ruling Democratic Party candidate for the parliament, wears a mask to prevent contracting the coronavirus disease as he poses for a selfie in Seoul, April 10, 2020.In South Korea, officials took a different approach to deploying big data.  They used an infected person’s cell phone location data to retrace his or her steps and then published their “anonymized” or anonymous location histories through phone apps and websites. Residents who learned through the apps they may have been exposed to the virus were quickly tested.    But while effective in containing the outbreak, South Korean authorities “are not doing a good job anonymizing the data,” the ACLU said.     “One alert informed the public, for example, of a ’43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district’ who was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class,” the report said.   In the U.S., authorities have shunned such intrusive techniques. Instead, they have largely relied on aggregate cell phone location data to monitor trends and people’s movements in and out of hot spots.   Experts say such aggregate location data usually don’t present privacy concerns as they involve information about large groups of people rather than individual location histories.    Yet contact tracing by both individuals and health authorities is likely to grow in use once the COVID-19 infection curve is flattened and the virus becomes more geographically localized.   Contact tracing apps use a combination of self-reported health status and location history and allow users to avoid exposure to the virus. FILE – A Google logo is seen at the company’s offices in Granary Square, London, Nov. 1, 2018.Apple and Google on Friday announced plans to develop a joint contact tracing app using Bluetooth technology.  The app allows users to report their positive diagnosis and to receive alerts when they’re in close contact with an infected person.  Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington, warned that digital contact tracing of the kind used in Singapore, South Korea and Israel has significant potential for “unintended consequences, misuse, and encroachment on privacy and civil liberties.”  To the extent that contact tracing efforts have been effective in these countries, “they have not been voluntary, self-reported, or involved self-help,” Calo said in written testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee. “Rather, public officials have forced compliance and dispatched investigators to interview and, if necessary, forcibly quarantine exposed individuals. I see it as an open question whether Americans would be comfortable with this level of state expenditure and intervention.”  
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The internet is playing a special role in the coronavirus pandemic, allowing billions of people sheltered at home to communicate. A global event is underway online to seek creative ways to deal with the crisis. Mike O’Sullivan has more on the Hack the Crisis movement and its worldwide Global Hack this weekend.
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With billions locked down at home by COVID-19, the internet is a lifeline, allowing people to work, study and share ideas online.It also presents opportunities, say the organizers of the Global Hack, a virtual gathering of hundreds of thousands of people in 50 nations taking place Thursday through Saturday, April 9-11. Prizes for the best ideas for new platforms, applications and innovations will be awarded April 12.Hackathons are usually mass gatherings of software developers and graphic designers who tackle problems in a competitive setting. With the Global Hack now under way, creative teams are working remotely to come up with solutions to problems raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.“We gather people together, with very different skills, different competencies,” said Kai Isand, a leader of the technology collective Accelerate Estonia and head organizer for this weekend’s Global Hack.“We brainstorm ideas, and we actually build them into working prototypes,” she said. A hackathon March 13-15 created a map of COVID-19 cases in Estonia, the country in northern Europe where the online movement Hack the Crisis started. Other teams developed a health questionnaire and a site to link volunteers with medical backgrounds. FILE – An Estonian police officer checks documents at the border crossing point as Estonia reintroduces border control and a ban to enter Estonia for foreigners as a preventive measure against the coronavirus in Valga, Estonia, March 17, 2020.Dozens of nations are now involved.“People said we were in lockdown, and we knocked down the lockdown and we felt so connected with everyone,” said Payal Manan Rajpal, who heads Hack the Crisis, India. She said her country has a huge pool of technology talent, and among the innovations that emerged from a recent Indian hackathon was “an AI (artificial intelligence) enabled robot, which will be very helpful to disinfect via UV (ultraviolet) rays in quarantine wards.” The movement has drawn support from the business community and IT sector.Estonia, where the Hack the Crisis movement started, is a nation of 1.3 million people that embraced the digital revolution early, said Viljar Lubi, Estonian vice minister for economic development for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.“We thought we could use IT in order to make our government leaner and smoother and bring it closer to its citizens,” he said.Estonia has pursued the concept of digital government, and in last year’s parliamentary election, 44% of Estonian voters cast their votes online. The Hack the Crisis movement began with a call for creative ideas from an Estonian government official. In response, international startup consultant Calum Cameron made a few phone calls and the concept was hammered out, with organizers quickly securing government backing.Within days, the March 13 online hack was under way.The online movement quickly spread to Latvia, Germany, Belarus and dozens of other countries. “Everybody in the region was thinking about it. Everybody had the same idea, but Estonia was the only country that was ready to actually go,” Cameron said.The online hacks are not just for IT experts, said Isand, of the Global Hack, and they welcome educators, designers, marketers and anyone with ideas. Online mentors include Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Cameron said that for the first time in history, humanity has been able to come together virtually to address a common problem, “and do something about it … using digital, using internet,” to mitigate this and future crises. 
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The Department of Defense has issued new guidance on the use of the popular videoconferencing application Zoom following a week-old FBI warning about security issues and a FILE- A Zoom app logo is displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Virginia, March 30, 2020.The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”The security concern is much greater than “Zoom bombing” attacks reported by users whose chats have been infiltrated by hackers shouting profanities or posting lewd images.Experts say the teleconferencing app may introduce security risks not only to government employees during Zoom sessions but also to data that reside on government computers.“If there are vulnerabilities, the app can jeopardize the security of data on the computer on which it is installed, or even potentially on other computers on the same network,” Joseph Steinberg, a leading cybersecurity expert and the author of Cybersecurity for Dummies, told VOA. “Such vulnerabilities have been discovered — and more may exist.”Some unaware of risksVOA reporting after the FBI warning on April 1 showed that Zoom remained a popular videoconferencing application for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom were aware of its potential risks.A Zoom spokeswoman said Thursday that Zoom takes user security “extremely seriously.”“A large number of global institutions ranging from the world’s largest financial services companies to leading telecommunications providers, government agencies, universities and others have done exhaustive security reviews of our user, network and datacenter layers and confidently selected Zoom for complete deployment,” the spokeswoman said.
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U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  Zoom has seen a surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic as office workers across the country have turned to the free app to quickly arrange video calls with dozens of participants. The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”  The security concern is much greater than “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan attends the opening bell at Nasdaq as his company holds its IPO, April 18, 2019, in New York.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an April 1 blog post that the company was freezing work on new features to focus on fixing its privacy and security problems.   In the meantime, VOA reporting shows that Zoom remains one of the most popular videoconferencing applications for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom are aware of its potential risks.  “I’m not aware of any issues with Zoom,” a senior official in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a small group of reporters a day after the FBI guidance was issued. The U.S. defense official said he was using Zoom to videoconference amid the need to social distance, but when pressed by VOA about the potential security risks, the official added that every discussion his team had while on Zoom was “at the unclassified level.” Government employees can use Zoom for Government, a paid tier service that is hosted in a separate cloud authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It is unclear, however, how many government employees have differentiated between the two services thus far. To date, Zoom remains on the approved list of mobile phone applications for U.S. Department of Defense employees, according to multiple officials. However, one senior defense official said the Pentagon was currently looking into “guidance adjustments” for the application. Multiple employees at the State Department have also been using Zoom for official business. One staff member said he and his colleagues have daily Zoom meetings and have not received any guidance against using the app for internal and external communication. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper last week tweeted about his department’s use of a “Zoom Room.” Be it via “Zoom Room,” WebXing, or VTC, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, March 5, 2020.Concerns of Chinese cybertheft  Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor’s Threat Lens and a former diplomatic security service special agent, told VOA a “good portion” of Zoom’s development team is in China, and the videoconferencing company’s failure to use end-to-end encryption could allow an employee under pressure by the Chinese government to access and share private conversations.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly said maintaining a military advantage over China is the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” and for years top military officers have warned of China’s use of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and cyber-espionage to expand their military capabilities. Steinberg told VOA he would not recommend Zoom use on military or government computers. “Other apps are more time tested,” he said. Nike Ching, Katherine Gypson, Michelle Quinn and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.  
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U.S. military and government employees continue to use the popular videoconferencing application Zoom for official business, despite FBI warnings about privacy and security issues, an action experts fear is increasing the risk of government data breaches.  Zoom has seen a surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic as office workers across the country have turned to the free app to quickly arrange video calls with dozens of participants. The federal government has been no different, despite an FBI announcement April 1 that hackers could exploit weaknesses in videoconferencing software systems like Zoom to “steal sensitive information, target individuals and businesses performing financial transactions, and engage in extortion.”  The security concern is much greater than “Zoom CEO Eric Yuan attends the opening bell at Nasdaq as his company holds its IPO, April 18, 2019, in New York.Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in an April 1 blog post that the company was freezing work on new features to focus on fixing its privacy and security problems.   In the meantime, VOA reporting shows that Zoom remains one of the most popular videoconferencing applications for U.S. government employees from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, not all of whom are aware of its potential risks.  “I’m not aware of any issues with Zoom,” a senior official in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a small group of reporters a day after the FBI guidance was issued. The U.S. defense official said he was using Zoom to videoconference amid the need to social distance, but when pressed by VOA about the potential security risks, the official added that every discussion his team had while on Zoom was “at the unclassified level.” Government employees can use Zoom for Government, a paid tier service that is hosted in a separate cloud authorized by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program. It is unclear, however, how many government employees have differentiated between the two services thus far. To date, Zoom remains on the approved list of mobile phone applications for U.S. Department of Defense employees, according to multiple officials. However, one senior defense official said the Pentagon was currently looking into “guidance adjustments” for the application. Multiple employees at the State Department have also been using Zoom for official business. One staff member said he and his colleagues have daily Zoom meetings and have not received any guidance against using the app for internal and external communication. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper last week tweeted about his department’s use of a “Zoom Room.” Be it via “Zoom Room,” WebXing, or VTC, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper gestures during a news conference at the Pentagon, March 5, 2020.Concerns of Chinese cybertheft  Scott Stewart, vice president of Stratfor’s Threat Lens and a former diplomatic security service special agent, told VOA a “good portion” of Zoom’s development team is in China, and the videoconferencing company’s failure to use end-to-end encryption could allow an employee under pressure by the Chinese government to access and share private conversations.  Defense Secretary Mark Esper has repeatedly said maintaining a military advantage over China is the Pentagon’s “highest priority,” and for years top military officers have warned of China’s use of forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft and cyber-espionage to expand their military capabilities. Steinberg told VOA he would not recommend Zoom use on military or government computers. “Other apps are more time tested,” he said. Nike Ching, Katherine Gypson, Michelle Quinn and Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.  
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Just as the coronavirus outbreak has boxed in society, it’s also squeezed high-flying tech companies reliant on people’s freedom to move around and get together.Since the beginning of March, for instance, Uber shares have lost a quarter of their value. Rival Lyft is down 28 percent. Over the same period, the S&P 500 has fallen just 10 percent, even with wild swings along the way. The picture is even less clear for other, still-private “unicorn” companies once valued at more than $1 billion, such as Airbnb and WeWork.“What market pressure will mean for all companies is survival of the fittest,” said Allen Adamson, co-founder of the marketing firm Metaforce and a business professor at New York University. “If you are going into this storm in a bad shape, it’s not going to be pretty.”Just few weeks ago, Airbnb was poised to cash in on a soaring stock market with its highly anticipated public offering. But with the market now reeling and few people looking to anywhere but home, Airbnb is reportedly racking up millions of dollars in losses while fending off a backlash from hosts who rely on its service to survive.FILE – An Uber sticker is seen on a car in Lafayette, Louisiana, U.S.on Feb. 16, 2020.Hosts were furious when the company told guests they could cancel their stays without penalties. Last week, Airbnb agreed to pay hosts $250 million to make up for some of the money lost to cancellations.AirDNA, a data firm that helps property owners set rental rates, says the impact on U.S. Airbnb hosts has been mixed. In New York City, bookings dropped 66 percent in March, but in outer suburbs they were up as people fled the city. Bookings in Westhampton Beach, N.Y., jumped sixfold. Similarly, bookings in the city of Chicago fell 11 percent last month, but in St. Joseph, Michigan — a lakeside community within driving distance — they were up by a factor of four.Cary Gillenwater, who has an attached guest suite in Amsterdam listed on Airbnb, said 20 guests have canceled reservations between March and June, costing him nearly $11,000. He had hoped for compensation from the company but was told that only reservations canceled through Airbnb that specifically mentioned the coronavirus would qualify. Several of his would-be guests contacted him directly to cancel; he refunded their money but may be out of luck when it comes to reimbursement. Airbnb didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.The company got a lifeline of sorts on Monday, when two private equity firms — Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners — invested $1 billion in debt and equity in the company. The firms said they expect Airbnb to emerge from the crisis in a stronger position.The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, however, that the company will pay interest of more than 10 percent on those loans and that it has made a “verbal commitment” to reduce fixed costs and to bring in supplemental management — terms that often mean layoffs and other cost-cutting. Airbnb didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the Journal report.FILE – Supporters of Airbnb stand during a rally at City Hall in New York in 2015.Uber, meanwhile, is trying to reassure jittery investors than its aggressive expansion plans for ride-hailing remain on track. Like its rival Lyft, it has seen ride demand hit a wall as states ratchet up stay-at-home orders. Both companies are trying to conserve cash so they can weather the pandemic’s fallout, in part by emphasizing deliveries of food and other goods.Even in its worst-case scenario — an 80 percent decline in ridership through 2020 — the company said it would end the year with $4 billion in cash. That would still mean burning through almost $7 billion this year, which could create problems for Uber’s larger ambitions such as self-driving cars and air taxis.Analysts, however, remain largely bullish. “We believe both Uber and Lyft will come out the other side still well placed to capture growth and opportunity,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.Drivers are another story. San Diegan Christopher Chandler, who’s been driving for both companies for two years, said he’s lost more than 80 percent of his income since riders all but vanished. “I’m going to have to make some hard choices about what bills I won’t pay this month,” said Chandler, who has switched to deliveries that don’t come close to covering his former ride income.Other lesser-known companies, however, have benefited from the pandemic. Zoom, the video conferencing provider, has seen its stock soar to new highs in recent weeks; shares have nearly quadrupled compared to their IPO price just 11 months ago.FILE – Blue Apron CEO Matthew B. Salzberg, center, poses with employees in front of the New York Stock Exchange before the company’s IPO in New York, U.S., in 2017.Not so long ago, the meal-kit maker Blue Apron was threatened with delisting from the New York Stock Exchange after its shares fell below the exchange minimum of $1. Since the beginning of March, however, company shares have more than tripled after it reported a sharp increase in consumer demand fueled by stay-at-home orders.CB Insights lists more than 450 startups worldwide valued at $1 billion or more. While it can be hard to paint these unicorns with a broad brush because of their variety of business models and leadership styles, co-founder and CEO Anand Sanwal said that what COVID-19 is doing to the economy will be “tough for any company to weather, startup or not.”Sanwal said he’s already seeing a decline in early-stage seed investments that help launch new tech startups. But he said investors who have poured big sums into unicorn startups will likely try to do what they can to help keep them healthy, at the very least by grooming them for sale rather than standing by as they collapse.“Investors are going to make some hard decisions about whether this is a temporary downturn, or a company that doesn’t have a shot,” he said. 
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In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, one sign that social distancing measures may be working is that people’s temperatures — a symptom of the virus — are dropping in some cities in the U.S., according to a smart thermometer company. The data could give health officials an early look into how the virus is progressing. Michelle Quinn takes a look.
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Habbo Hotel, a hit online networking game more than a decade ago, is drawing back hundreds of thousand of players as locked-down millennials look to rediscover a childhood favorite, its Finnish maker said.   “Our traffic has tripled over the past month. The exact user number growth figure is 213% since February 25,” game maker Sulake’s Chief Executive Valtteri Karu told Reuters, adding that this included hundreds of thousands of new and returning users.   Launched 20 years ago, Habbo Hotel gained a strong following among children and teenagers before it was eclipsed by social media sites such as Facebook by 2010.   With a layout reminiscent of classic video games, Habbo Hotel consists of rooms that players can decorate and where they can meet other players to chat or play games. They can also join virtual parties in search of new acquaintances.   One returning user is Pilvi Pitkaranta, a 23-year-old University of Tampere student who was an active player with her classmates about 10 years ago.   With all student events canceled because of the coronavirus, Pitkaranta decided to organize a virtual party at Habbo Hotel. About 30 of her fellow students joined the party at the end of March.   “I thought it was a fun idea to organize a party there, also out of nostalgia,” Pitkaranta said.   “Some people are finding it very distressing that they have to be home alone and are finding it hard to get things done when stuck indoors.”   Habbo Hotel has versions in nine languages, attracting most users in the Americas and Europe, Sulake’s Karu said.   “As the world has shut down, the more users have come along,” he added.   The game’s Finnish maker is jointly owned by private Dutch advertising group Azerion and Finnish telecoms operator Elisa.   It remains to be seen if Habbo’s renewed popularity will last only as long as the virus.   As welcome a diversion as Habbo may be, Pitkaranta and her fellow students are looking forward to when they can enjoy some real-life partying, she said. 
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Taiwan’s cabinet has told government agencies to stop using Zoom Video Communications Inc’s conferencing app, the latest blow to the company as it battles criticism of its booming platform over privacy and security.Zoom’s daily users ballooned to more than 200 million in March, as coronavirus-induced shutdowns forced employees to work from home and schools switched to the company’s free app for conducting and coordinating online classes.However, the company is facing a backlash from users worried about the lack of end-to-end encryption of meeting sessions and “zoombombing,” where uninvited guests crash into meetings.If government agencies must hold video conferencing, they “should not use products with security concerns, like Zoom,” Taiwan’s cabinet said in a statement on Tuesday. It did not elaborate on what the security concerns were.The island’s education ministry later said it was banning the use of Zoom in schools.Zoom did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Taiwan would be the first government formally advising against use of Zoom, although some U.S. schools districts are looking at putting limits on its use after an FBI warning last month.Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan last week apologized a-message-to-our-users to users, saying the company had fallen short of the community’s privacy and security expectations, and was taking steps to fix the issues.Zoom competes with Microsoft’s Teams, Cisco’s Webex and Google’s Hangouts.Taiwan’s cabinet said domestically-made conferencing apps were preferred, but if needed products from Google and Microsoft could also be considered.Zoom’s shares dipped 1% in premarket trading on the Nasdaq. They have lost nearly a third of their market value since touching record highs late March. 
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Ceri Weber had just begun to defend her dissertation when the chaos began: Echoes and voices interrupted her. Someone parroted her words. Then Britney Spears music came on, and someone told Weber to shut up. Someone threatened to rape her. Hackers had targeted the meeting on the video conference platform Zoom while Weber was completing the final step of her doctoral degree at Duke University. The harassment lasted 10 minutes — the result of an increasingly common form of cyber attack known as “Zoom bombing.” As tens of millions of people turn to video conferencing to stay connected during the coronavirus pandemic, many have reported uninvited guests who make threats, interject racist, anti-gay or anti-Semitic messages, or show pornographic images. The attacks have drawn the attention of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. “It seemed like someone was just being silly,” but then the intrusions “started to get more serious and threatening,” Weber recalled. “I was really in the zone and kept presenting.” She said she was more concerned about others in the chat who could have been scared. She was interrupted despite having selected “mute all” in the settings for the meeting she conducted from her home in Durham, North Carolina. A Massachusetts high school reported that someone interrupted a virtual class on Zoom, yelled profanity and revealed the teacher’s home address. Another school in that state reported a person who accessed a meeting and showed swastika tattoos, according to the FBI. The agency’s field office in Boston recommended that users of video-teleconference platforms prioritize their security by ensuring that hosts have sole control over screen-sharing features and meeting invitations. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Zoom with questions about how users’ privacy and security are being protected. In a separate later, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sought information about how the company handles users’ personal data and guards against security threats and abuse. Zoom has referred to trolls as “party crashers,” which some critics have taken as a sign the company is downplaying the attacks. In a statement issued last week, the company told The Associated Press it takes the security of meetings seriously and encourages users to report any incidents directly to Zoom. The company suggested that people hosting large, public meetings confirm that they are the only ones who can share their screen and use features like mute controls. “For those hosting private meetings, password protections are on by default, and we recommend that users keep those protections on to prevent uninvited users from joining,” the company said. Zoom recently updated the default screen-sharing settings for education users so that teachers are by default the only ones who can share content. Despite the update, Nevada’s Clark County School District, which includes all public schools in Las Vegas, and the New York City Department of Education, which is responsible for the largest school district in the U.S., have told teachers to stop using Zoom. Zoom-bombing was always a threat given how the video conferencing app was configured — geared more toward user-friendliness than privacy, said Justin Brookman, director of privacy and technology policy at Consumer Reports. When shelter-at-home mandates suddenly converted Zoom into a lifeline for tens of millions of families, it became a juicy target for mischief, he said. For years, “the usability issues outweighed the potential security issues because society was less reliant on them. Obviously, that has changed dramatically over the last month,” Brookman added. Some Zoom-bombers have been able to randomly guess meeting IDs and crash conferences not configured to keep out interlopers, he said. In other cases, inexperienced users have exposed meeting IDs online, including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who tweeted a screenshot of a Zoom Cabinet meeting that showed the ID and everyone’s screen name. Brookman said Zoom can do more to boost privacy protections for a massive user base that now ranges from elementary school children to senior citizens discussing their wills with attorneys. “A lot of people, including us, are critical of how they enable hosts to surveil users to make sure they are paying attention to the screen, or reading DMs or recording the call when it’s not entirely clear,” Brookman said. A mother in Georgia told a local TV station that her son was “embarrassed and a little hysterical” after someone hacked into his online class and showed pornography to the children and teacher. The Rev. Jason Wells was holding a publicly advertised forum recently on Zoom when a troll entered and used the chat box to post a racial slur so many times that it made the feature unusable for other participants. “I would not say this was a random vandal hoping to interrupt somebody,” said Wells, who is executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches in Concord and co-chair of a state chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign, part of a movement pioneered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The intruder was eventually removed and blocked. As the Rev. Laura Everett delivered a sermon via Zoom for Boston’s First Baptist Church, a user who had seen the church service advertised entered the video conferencing session and shouted homophobic and racist slurs. Everett said she had tweeted the link to the sermon because she wanted “the doors of the church to be open to every weary soul who is looking for a word of comfort.” “This was, for all intents and purposes, a house of worship that was violated,” she said. “Zoom and every other business bears the primary responsibility for users’ safety.” In Oakland, California, Malachi Garza reported an attack on a Zoom conference she hosted for roughly 200 participants, including formerly incarcerated people who have experience with solitary confinement and are struggling with the pandemic’s stay-home orders. The conference organized by the philanthropic Solidare Network was interrupted by racist, anti-transgender language, and pornographic images were flashed on a shared screen.  Zoom needs to “tell the truth and call this what it really is,” Garza said. “It’s racial terror, not party crashers.”   
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