City staff had training before hackers hit, even did test meeting

Columbia Falls city manager Susan Nicosia said last week that herself and city staff went through training before last week’s Zoom meeting, even going so far as to have some test meetings beforehand.

The tests went fine. The regular meeting, however, was marred by hackers, who repeatedly interrupted the proceedings with racial comments, foul language and pornography.

Nicosia said she went through a class that was supposed to show public officials how to avoid “Zoom bombing” — which is what it’s called when hackers sabotage a meeting.

The city is not alone in this regard. Since the coronavirus outbreak has effectively stopped all in-person public meetings, the Zoom platform has been increasingly the way to hold public meetings via videoconferencing.

But with the popularity comes hackers, who appear to disrupt the meetings just for fun. Hackers have disrupted meetings across the U.S. There’s even YouTube videos showing people how to hack meetings using a phone app.

Nicosia said the problems locally appear to have risen when she shared the council packet. Prior to that, there were no hackers. After that, the flood came.

One hacker stayed on board even after the meeting ended, harassing her. She kicked one hacker out of the meeting four separate times, but he kept coming back.

All told, the meeting drew 114 participants — most of them were not legitimately interested in the proceedings.

Nicosia said the problem with the Zoom share feature is that it didn’t have the gateway controls to keep people that shouldn’t have been there out of the meeting. Some even looked legitimate — until they spoke.

City staff had to scramble during the meeting to block people.

Nicosia said she tried to get help from the company after the meeting. She was on the phone for two hours to support until the line disconnected and emails to support went unanswered.

One city in Illinois has taken to muting all but the main participants and then the clerk reads written comments from the public back to the city council, Nicosia said.

Other states have begun actively catching and prosecuting hackers, with help from the FBI, state and local law enforcement.