Author Topic: Pentagon bans Zoom over ‘security concerns’ after reports of app routing data through China  (Read 666 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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American Military News by  Kyle Perisic  April 14, 2020

The Pentagon has banned most versions of a popular video conferencing application for its personnel after reports surfaced revealing major security issues linked to China.

Service members, civilians and contractors can no longer use free versions of Zoom in official capacities, said a Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col Robert Carver, in a statement to Military.com. However, personnel will be allowed to used Zoom for Government, a paid and more secure version of the application, but only for “publicly-releasable DoD information not categorized as For Official Use Only,” Carver said.

Zoom for Government has been issued a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) provisional authorization, Carver added.

“During a test of a Zoom meeting with two users, one in the United States and one in Canada, we found that the AES-128 key for conference encryption and decryption was sent to one of the participants over TLS from a Zoom server apparently located in Beijing, 52.81.151.250,” the University of Toronto researchers wrote in their findings. “A company primarily catering to North American clients that sometimes distributes encryption keys through servers in China is potentially concerning, given that Zoom may be legally obligated to disclose these keys to authorities in China.”

More: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/04/pentagon-bans-zoom-over-security-concerns-after-reports-of-app-routing-data-through-china/