They wanted to know how to be as safe and effective as possible.Įarlier this year, the FBI sent out a warning about “ zoom-bombing,” after a series of virtual intrusions into classes that were forced to go online as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. “Maybe the school had included a link to a YouTube video on how to use them. “A lot of our members asked for training on these programs the school had asked them to use,” Sharkey said. Many of his members have reached out to ask for help. The Broward school district said the incident was not the result of a hacking and they are currently reviewing security protocols.īut both incidents and others across the country are raising questions about how local school districts are making sure their virtual classes are secure and how teachers are supposed to discipline students when they can’t interact with them face to face.Ĭolin Sharkey, executive director of the American Association of Educators, said many teachers struggle to navigate the security features of online platforms like Teams and Zoom. Screenshots provided by a parent show the intruder using the f word and calling another student a “fat b****.” 1 show an intruder posting obscene language in the classroom chat. Screenshots from a virtual 5th-grade class at Parkside Elementary School in Coral Springs on Sept. Video of the virtual hijacking circulated on social media, showing the intruder referring to himself as the “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and repeatedly using racist terms to describe Blacks and Hispanics. The intruder began blowing air into his microphone to interrupt the teacher then went on a racist rant, students told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

21, students in a Microsoft Teams personal education virtual class for West Broward High School were interrupted by a man on video wearing glasses and a camouflaged face mask. The incidents early in this new school year are the latest examples of “zoom-bombing,” where hijackers interrupt online conferences with hateful language or pornographic images, and highlight concerns about cybersecurity in the era of online learning.

On Tuesday, another intruder posted obscene language in a fifth grade virtual class at Parkside Elementary School. A masked man hijacked an online class at West Broward High School during the first week of classes and went on a disturbing, racist video rant.

Zoombombing examples