What is "Zoom Bombing" and Who is Behind It?
Reports of “Zoom bombing,” in which virtual meetings are disrupted by graphic or threatening messages, have quickly garnered attention across the country.
What is "Zoom Bombing" and Who is Behind It?
Reports of “Zoom bombing,” in which virtual meetings are disrupted by graphic or threatening messages, have quickly garnered attention across the country.
On March 24, 2020, a white supremacist interrupted a webinar about antisemitism hosted by a Massachusetts Jewish student group by pulling his shirt collar down to reveal a swastika tattoo on his chest. The Center on Extremism examined a screenshot of the individual and believes him to be Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, a known white supremacist and hacker.
As documented by ADL, Auernheimer—also known as “weev”—has a long history of publicly expressing his antisemitic and racist views and exploiting technology in order to gain attention. In 2016, Auernheimer claimed credit for sending white supremacist fliers to thousands of networked printers on college campuses around the country. The fliers blamed Jews for destroying the country “through mass immigration and degeneracy” and advertised the neo-Nazi website, The Daily Stormer. A few months later, in two subsequent waves of fliering, Auernheimer depicted Jews being killed and raped and called for supporting and defending acts of violence against anyone he perceived as anti-white. Later that same year, Auernheimer also participated in a harassment campaign against Jewish journalists on Twitter.
Auernheimer has referred to himself as a “white nationalist hacktivist,” and previously was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, where he served slightly more than a year on federal charges related to computer hacking. That conviction and sentence were overturned in 2014 for improper venue issues. In a piece on The Daily Dot, he describes himself as “a long-time critic of Judaism, black culture, immigration to Western nations, and the media’s constant stream of anti-white propaganda.” Auernheimer also expressed these views in a 2014 post on The Daily Stormer, in which he ranted against “the Jews” for building “an empire of wickedness the likes the world has never seen.” In 2009, he created several videos containing antisemitic ramblings and comments, which alerted the FBI to Auernheimer’s location; the FBI warned him not to go near Jewish congregations or agencies.
As the coronavirus pandemic has led to more people spending time at home and conducting school and business online, an increasing focus has been placed on certain technologies and their ability to facilitate hate and harassment. Reports of “Zoom bombing,” a reference to the popular video conferencing platform Zoom in which virtual meetings are disrupted by graphic or threatening messages, have quickly garnered attention across the country. Inside Higher Ed recently reported incidents targeting virtual classrooms at Arizona State University and the University of Southern California, as well as a children’s storytelling session in New Jersey. According to NBC News, during a virtual Torah lesson on March 22, multiple people interrupted the session by sharing antisemitic images and language. In Thousand Oaks, California, an online school board meeting was cut short after someone shared pornographic images, as well as a Nazi flag and swastika.
While some of these reported Zoom bombing incidents can be attributed to internet trolls without particularly malicious intentions, there is concern that extremists could exploit the increasing reliance on video conferencing technology to target certain groups or advance their hateful messages. Across various social media platforms, extremists have already seized on the coronavirus pandemic as a vehicle to spread their hate and conspiracies. While, to date, there has been limited online chatter among extremists about the specific strategy of abusing video conferencing technology, Auernheimer’s recent actions in Massachusetts demonstrate the potential for extremists to exploit these systems.
