On Jan. 22nd, 2012, Nicole Perlroth reported for the New York Times on a new vulnerability for hackers to exploit. According to the article, a cybersecurity researcher doing penetration testing for top law firms found that hackers can easily break into video conferencing cameras in boardrooms. The article noted that "the hacker could have easily eavesdropped on privileged attorney-client conversations or read trade secrets on a report lying on the conference room table." The penetration tester went on to say that he could easily break into oil companies, pharmaceutical firms, courtrooms, and venture capital firms through the video-conferencing vulnerability.
Why are the video-conferencing systems so vulnerable? The article explained that companies have hooked the video-conferencing systems up to the internet and set them up outside the firewall.
You can find the NYT source article here.
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