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After Zoom trolling, ICANN 68 will be password-protected

Kevin Murphy, May 6, 2020, 18:02:44 (UTC), Domain Policy

If you want to show up to ICANN 68, which will be held online next month, you’re going to need a password.

ICANN said this week that it’s updating its Zoom software and standard configuration to require passwords. In a blog post outlining a number of changes to its Zoom instance, ICANN said:

The most impactful change is the new requirement that all meetings be secured with a password. This is the first step recommended by security professionals to keep meetings secure, and one which we had largely adopted org-wide prior to making it a requirement for all. We will make another announcement in the coming weeks regarding how this may impact joining meetings during ICANN68, as we work towards the best overall solution.

Quite how this could work while maintaining the usual openness of ICANN’s public meetings — which have always been free to attend basically anonymously — remains to be seen.

At ICANN 67, Zoom sessions that were open to the public simply required you to enter a name. Any name. At in-person public meetings, I don’t think you even need to show ID to get a hall pass.

The changes come in the wake of a “Zoombombing” incident during a minor meeting in March, during which trolls showed up via a publicly-posted link and flooded the session with “inappropriate and offensive” audio and imagery.

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Comments (5)

  1. Owen says:

    ICANN started requiring government IDs to obtain name badges several years ago- perhaps it was ICANN57 in Hyderabad?

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      Is that true? I’m pretty sure I blagged my way into Copenhagen with no ID. And can’t you just self-service a lanyard on the terminals?

      I might be wrong.

      • Owen says:

        The earliest reference re: government ID I could find was ICANN61: “All attendees will be required to present valid government-issued identification at the registration desk before receiving printed credentials.” So perhaps it was not a requirement for ICANN58 in Copenhagen. https://meetings.icann.org/en/sanjuan61

  2. Theo Geurts says:

    Since ICANN participation is open to everyone and their dog, anyone can apply to a WG or a public session or IRT. Setting up a fake SOI is easy.

    Once you obtain all the passwords you can post it on 8Chan or whatever. The passwords are not linked to registered users who provided DNA swabs anyways. So you can keep leaking those passwords.

    https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/
    This one allows you to set up fake ID’s that will pass most cross-field validations and are used by many criminals or legit investigators who need a sock puppet accounts to investigate a target.

    Such ID generators bypass most checks on all social media platforms and other platforms. There are a few requirements prior to using such fake id generators but if applied correctly you can even set up bank accounts in some countries.

    • Chris Bell says:

      Surely at an internet convention the name given to us at birth is our fake name, while the name we made up ourselves is our real name.

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