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Zoom's First Acquisition To Add A Real Encryption: Not Anymore A Phony

07/05/2020

Zoom is the undisputed champion of video conferencing amid the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic.

Despite experiencing a massive surge in users, Zoom has been regarded as slow in adopting security features to protect its platform. From Zoombombing to multiple privacy and security-related scandals, the company is seen as a step behind in its every move.

But things could be changing, as it's addressing its security complaints by acquiring Keybase, a company has been building end-to-end encryption products for six years. Keybase should help Zoom to actually deliver end-to-end encryption that it claimed to have.

With the acquisition, Keybase becomes a subsidiary of Zoom, with its team members moving over to join Zoom.

On a blog post on Keybase's website, the company stated:

"Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty of notice."
Zoom acquires Keybase

According to Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan in a blog post:

"We are proud to announce the acquisition of Keybase, another milestone in Zoom’s 90-day plan to further strengthen the security of our video communications platform. Since its launch in 2014, Keybase’s team of exceptional engineers has built a secure messaging and file-sharing service leveraging their deep encryption and security expertise. We are excited to integrate Keybase’s team into the Zoom family to help us build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability."

"This acquisition marks a key step for Zoom as we attempt to accomplish the creation of a truly private video communications platform that can scale to hundreds of millions of participants, while also having the flexibility to support Zoom’s wide variety of uses."

At this time of announcement, the precise timeline for the integration of full end-to-end encryption to Zoom is not known.

Zoom only indicated that it would be publishing a draft cryptographic design, and would be working with a range of customers and experts to come up with a final design before starting a proper timeline for deployment.

Zoom had previously suggested that its chats were protected with end-to-end technology, but analysis by researchers suggested that it was a lot weaker than expected.

Zoom had been criticized for the "lie".

At the beginning of April, the company revealed that it had suspended all other product development in order to focus on security features, after a number of concerns were raised about the safety on its service.

A 90-day program was then initiated to improve Zoom's security settings.

With it acquiring Keybase, Zoom should be able to add a real end-to-end encryption technology to prevent its users' messages from being intercepted as they are sent.

Zoom said its intention is to offer end-to-end encryption meetings to all paid account users, at least initially.