Zoom 1st Murder Case: Father Stabbed to Death

A 32-year-old American killed his father during the latter's participation in a videoconference by the "Zoom" application in the first known murder during a meeting via this platform, according to the Suffolk County Police in New York.

This incident happened on Thursday afternoon when Thomas Scully Bowers stabbed his 72-year-old father, Dwight Powers, to death in Amityville, Long Island which is well-known for its horror movie that came to the cinemas in 1979.

The police explained in a statement that participants in the virtual meeting contacted the emergency services after they saw what had happened. But it is not known exactly what the participants saw.

[caption id="attachment_128359" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Zoom Murder[/caption]

"We don't know what they saw. We think about twenty people were participating in that meeting. They saw him disappearing from the screen and then they heard him breathing with difficulty," police official Kevin Bearer told local newspaper Newsday.

The son tried to escape but the police arrested him near the crime scene and quickly admitted him to the hospital, where he was kept until Friday morning, until he was charged with an official charge of committing the crime later in the day, according to the police.

This murder seems to be the first of its kind during a meeting via the "Zoom" platform, whose number of users has increased significantly with the imposition of quarantine measures around the world to cordon the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

In a related context, the British authorities are investigating more than 120 cases of child abuse through the "Zoom" platform, which has been widely used to hold virtual meetings in light of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zoom Lacks Sufficient Safety

Britain's National Crime Agency said that more than 120 calls via the Zoom service have been hacked by pirates, and have shown pictures of child abuse, according to the British Sky News.

These hacking of the platform have increased, and it has become known as "Zoom Bombing", especially with the closing procedures in the world, which have prompted many educational institutions and companies to use this service to conduct their business.

Zoom service suffers from a security flaw that allows anyone to access any meeting if they have the session number or the link to it, after exchanging this information through social networking sites.

British authorities described these incidents as "horrific", accusing the operators of the Zoom service of failing to protect users, which prompted the party concerned to take an action.

A spokesman for the British National Crime Agency said the agency was leading a concerted effort to respond to violations during video conferences, especially those that are hacked and display inappropriate photos of children.

The spokesman explained that the agency's role is to track down the computers that hackers used to infiltrate some of the meetings, and to verify the authenticity of the images that were broadcast in order to protect child victims.

The agency advised users of this service not to share meeting links or passwords on social media, and verify the identity of the participants before allowing them to join the call.

Earlier in April, Zoom Video Communications said that it was updating its encryption features in its video chat app, to overcome security concerns, with a 50 percent increase in users within three weeks in the past month.

The company added that more than 300 million are using the Zoom application daily, after their number jumped by 100 million within 22 days. This came despite a flurry of criticism the app encountered from cyber security experts and users, due to coding gaps.

Zoom use jumped after companies, political parties, schools, organizations and millions around the world were forced to work from home, after imposing public isolation measures, to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.