INNISFIL, ONT. -- "What is happening," One Innisfil councillor can be heard asking during a ZOOM meeting Wednesday evening.
Innisfil town staff is considering its virtual options after a council meeting fell prey to a 'ZOOM-bombing.'
Unidentified pranksters commandeered the online meeting, screeching into microphones, taking over the shared screen, and filling it with heart emojis and scribbling.
It appears the town left the door wide open for the culprits.
Councillors were in the thick of their agenda in a meeting live streaming on YouTube. Just before 7:30 p.m., YouTube experienced a global outage.
"We took a break for about 10 minutes, tried to see if we could get it back up. We couldn't. So we made the decision to share the link to the ZOOM meeting," explains Johnny Keogh, Innisfil's communications and community engagement lead.
But in the scramble to resume its meeting, the town didn't select the option that would allow people to observe, but not take over the meeting.
Tech analyst Carmi Levy explains that it should have been simple to avoid.
"Just go into the settings, flip a switch or two, and you're good. But in reality, this was a rushed job," Levy says.
Levy says the kind of people who pull off a 'ZOOM-bomb' are hardly sophisticated, state-sponsored hackers.
"These are probably kids who just want to get off on disrupting a public meeting. They're the same kind of kids who would throw eggs at a house, ring a doorbell and run away," Levy says.
The security of ZOOM has been flagged as the popularity of the platform soared during the pandemic.
Luckily, there weren't any privacy violations in Innisfil since the online meeting was public.
But Levy says it's inconvenient and embarrassing for Innisfil.
"The damage here is that the town looks like it can't get its digital act together," Levy says.
His best advice is to have a solid plan and a backup too.
"Make sure that plan is well-communicated to everyone. Make sure everyone knows what to do in case their first option isn't available. That didn't happen here," he says.
According to Keogh, town staff members discussed how to do better on Thursday before next week's council meeting.
"All options are on the table to make something and deliver something that's better, that's definitely accessible, and hopefully doesn't lead to these kinds of disruptions again," he said.
