Security researchers have uncovered a way for attackers to snoop on video conferences run on the Cisco WebEx and Zoom platforms.
Dubbed “Prying Eye”, the flaw spotted by Cequence Security is a weakness in web conferencing APIs that would allow attackers to use an enumeration attack to find open calls or meetings.
Enumeration attacks refer to the practice of using brute force to guess ID numbers – in this case, for meetings or calls. If the attacker guesses the right meeting ID number, and it isn’t password-protected, they have instant access.
That attack technique could work on any application that uses numbers as identifiers, but Cequence notes that it’s common practice to disable basic security such as passwords for web conferences in order to reduce friction for meeting participants. The flaw could be particularly troublesome for anyone who reuses meeting IDs, letting an attacker snoop on all future calls or conferences.
“In targeting an API instead of a web form fill, bad actors are able to leverage the same benefits of ease of use and flexibility that APIs bring to the development community,” said Shreyans Mehta, Cequence Security CTO and co-founder. “In the case of the Prying-Eye vulnerability, users should embrace the shared responsibility model and take advantage of the web conferencing vendors’ security features to not only protect their meetings but also take the extra step of confirming the attendee identities.”
Cequence alerted both companies to the vulnerability in July before taking it public today, giving Cisco and Zoom time to address the flaw. Cisco and Zoom have responded by altering default security settings and issuing advice to customers to help them avoid the vulnerability.
“Notably, the most effective step to strengthen the security of all meetings is to require a password – which is enabled by default for all WebEx meetings,” Cisco’s security team said in a statement provided by Cequence.
Richard Farley, CISO of Zoom Video Communications, said: “Zoom has improved our server protections to make it much harder for bad actors or malicious bots to troll for access into Zoom meetings.”
Farley added that passwords are now enabled by default, but stressed it was still possible to lighten such security settings to whatever is appropriate for different users. He said that, “as is true of other security options, meeting hosts are free to choose security settings that are most appropriate to the sensitivity of their meetings.”
Cequence Security added that it had not tested all other web conference vendors, so others may be at risk as well. The flaw can be avoided by requiring a password on sensitive conference calls or videos, and by confirming the identity of all attendees on a call.
The latest vulnerability comes just under a year after the discovery of a remote code execution flaw in WebEx’s update service, in which hackers could invoke a Windows update service tool which grants the ability to execute commands with system-level privileges.