Porn Interrupts Laguna Beach City Council Meeting

LAGUNA BEACH, CA —Social distancing during times of the coronavirus has led many city councils across the state to use streaming platforms to extend the reach for residents wishing to hear city business. A livestreaming portion of Laguna Beach's City Council meeting was hacked by a live pornographic display Tuesday night.

No. This is not an April Fools' joke. The incident is better known as Zoom Bombing. According to the FBI, Zoom-bombing, is when unwanted guests intrude on video meetings for malicious purposes. The action has "significantly increased during the pandemic," according to an FBI press release.

On Tuesday, Laguna Beach residents called in via the Zoom video conference platform to watch live video from the city or listen to the council meeting.

Typically during meetings like this, callers' microphones stay on mute until the administrator unmutes them during the live Zoom meeting. Webcam video of the callers remains at their discretion.

On Tuesday night, the city of Laguna Beach's technical support was unable to either mute or turn off the camera of people who were putting on a live pornographic display.

Voices and sounds of shock interrupted City Manager John Pietig's report on local closures, at 28.5 minutes into the meeting. (See below for full meeting).

One virtual attendee's video stream morphed into pornographic audio and visual display.

Director of Administrative Services Gavin Curran jumped to work and was able to mute the microphone; however, the video stream was not available to be blocked.

"It is very disappointing that someone would do that," Pietig said. "Very inappropriate."

As the meeting continued, Mayor Bob Whalen apologized to all present on the phone and the computer streaming service.

"My apologies to anyone who had to witness that visual pornography that someone saw fit to put into our meeting," Whalen said to the 51 people who called back in. "It won't happen again. My sincere apologies."

Whalen attempted to get the meeting back on track at that point. He also suggested that the Laguna Beach Police Department look into the matter.

Pietig continued his briefing to the public, announcing that city hall, beaches, trail heads, trolleys and the farmers market would not be open or running through April. All nonessential board meetings would cease until after April.

"Some additional things that would be happening through today …," Pietig continued, but was interrupted again by what one council member said was "a hacker."

"Don't do it. Don't Do it," the voice over the Zoom meeting said. "They're gonna call somebody …."
At that point, Curran shut off all microphones.

The city council scrambled to set things to rights before getting back to city business. The Zoom portion of the meeting was closed, and the council meeting continued with the livestream camera.

Patch has reached out to the Laguna Beach Police Department, as well as the Zoom meeting administrators, to discuss the interruption and security of the platform. The council will decide how to handle future meetings before the April 7 council session.

According to the FBI, all who use Zoom and other conferencing software should "exercise due diligence and caution in your cybersecurity efforts."

The FBI offered these steps to avoid teleconference hijacking threats:

• Do not make meetings or classrooms public. In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guests.
• Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people.
• Manage screensharing options. In Zoom, change screensharing to “Host Only.”
• Ensure users are using the updated version of remote access/meeting applications. In January 2020, Zoom updated their software. In their security update, the teleconference software provider added passwords by default for meetings and disabled the ability to randomly scan for meetings to join.
• Lastly, ensure that your organization’s telework policy or guide addresses requirements for physical and information security.

If you were a victim of a teleconference hijacking, or any cyber-crime for that matter, report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. Additionally, if you receive a specific threat during a teleconference, please report it to us at tips.fbi.gov or call the FBI Boston Division at (857) 386-2000.