Monica Chavez UTRGV– Here on campus, an investigation is underway. An Edinburg professor’s virtual presentation—zoom bombed—with what police describe as a disturbing video.
Two weeks ago, a police report was filed after an unidentified person shared a disturbing video during a zoom presentation hosted by a faculty member in Edinburg.
“Prosecution or Persecution,” An event for political scientists and the community was held on zoom from the Edinburg Health Affairs Building and disrupted by a VPN user.
According to Robert Velez, Political Science lecturer, an unidentified person took control of the screen during the zoom call and played a graphic video that displayed violence and terrorism.
Velez said the video showed a person in a hood making threats.
“In our zoom meeting now there’s buttons across the bottom if you want to share your screen or if you want to stop,” Velez said. “All those buttons disappeared, and then I realized this is one of those beheading videos where there was going to be graphic violence. And I noticed that the speaker had a black hood with eye holes had a knife and was pointing it at the screen, speaking in English, but with a middle eastern accent and talking about American imperialism and, you know, just basically making disparaging remarks about the country.”
Frank Zecca, chief technology officer, said zoom bombing became common during the COVID-19 pandemic and said after shifting to the internet, security was not a focus.
Zecca said the controls for the virtual event were not securely set up and it is not possible to identify the person who displayed the video because they were using a VPN.
“All I can tell you is they use an IP address from I think it was once called belgrade, belgrade, serbia and it’s a VPN service,” Zecca said. “So, the user could have been anywhere going to be here in the valley or anywhere in the world. Just use the VPN service that we’re using an IP address out of Serbia.”
He said it is important for faculty members and students who use zoom to implement all the security measures to prevent zoom bombing such as:
– Creating a waiting room to accept participants
– Setting a private meeting
– Use alternative resources such as a webinar
Esmeralda Guerra, UTRGV assistant chief police, said the case remains under investigation.
“So there are a lot of witnesses that were apparently attending,” Guerra said. “So, there’s a lot of interviews that have to be done and that is time-consuming. It’s not something that happens overnight, so it’s a long process.”
University Police and the IT Department advise the community to investigate the university’s safety measures when using platforms like zoom.
For zoom safety procedures, visit support.utrgv.edu.
