In these difficult times when we are all locked at home, the use of video conferencing has skyrocketed. To facilitate working from home, people are moving their meetings online and Zoom has been a key application that people have been using.

The Register report that Zoom is lacking in good security and that uses a custom version of RTP with a single AES-128 shared across participants in what is known as ECB mode. This is known to be insufficient from a security perspective as information is easily leaked and patterns in the video stream can be detected. Citizen Lab posted the following image of how these patterns can look.

Further security concerns with Zoom are that the security keys were sent via a server in China that is provided by a company with known links to the Chinese Government. Zoom have since downplayed concerns around this.

Alternatives

Fortknoxter

Fortknoxster uses WebRTC for video and audio calls using SRTP encrypting media streams. They have extended this further by building their own additional security layers on top of WebRTC.

Further to this, Fortknoxster uses blockchain for a decentralised trust of digital identities and have implemented a zero-knowledge architecture. Their main driver has always been security (it's in the name).

For point-to-point video conferencing - this is the most secure app I have found.

Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet is an open-sourced fully encrypted video conferencing and is the best app I have found for online meetings. It is has been recommended by the Tor project - and they know a thing or two about security.

Other Alternatives

I would be interested in the experiences of others. What other options are there for communicating securely?

Note: This post was originally posted by me on Hive