Joliet High School Class In Remote Learning Session Subjected To Racial Slurs, Porn In Zoombombing Attack

CHICAGO (CBS Chicago/CBS News) -- High school students in Joliet were the targets of a new Zoombombing attack.

The popular app said its number of users has ballooned from about 10 million to hundreds of millions with people isolated at home under coronavirus precautions. With the boom has come an intrusion – the FBI has warning about reports of people intruding on Zoom calls with pornographic or hate images.

As CBS 2's Tara Molina reported, the Joliet high school students were in a remote learning session when they were Zoom-bombed – and that was after the company announced a new safety protocol just days ago.

"I just felt like that would never happen to us," said Ernest Crim.

Crim is a history teacher and Black Student Union advisor at Joliet Central High School. He and his students experienced Zoombombing firsthand.

"They knew specifically that our group was all black," Crim said.

The hackers screamed racial slurs, according to Crim.

"They were screaming. You know, Nail n*****s to the cross. Nail n*****s to a cross," Crim said.

He said the attack didn't stop there.

"He started playing porn, and then at that point, it's just like, get out," Crim said.

Crim says they ended the call and reported the incident to administrators and the police.

Molina took the incident directly to Zoom, which just announced new safeguards to prevent these incidents from happening.

So why didn't they work?

A spokeswoman said updating your Zoom account is key - and would have prevented the incident.

"We are deeply upset to hear about the incidents involving this type of attack. We take the security of Zoom meetings seriously and in order to prevent such incidents from occurring, we strongly encourage users to arrange their settings so that only hosts can share their screens, and utilize features such as 'Waiting Room' and host muting controls," spokeswoman Audrey Webb said in an email.

There are new specific guides for teachers too, so only they can share content.

"We recently updated the default screen sharing settings for education users enrolled in our K-12 program so teachers by default are the only ones who can share content in class. We are committed to maintaining an equal, respectful and inclusive online environment for all our users regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, disability or genetics," Webb wrote.

Webb urged Zoom users to review the company's blog – which includes a post specifically geared toward education users.

Users are also urged to report incidents of any kind directly to the company.

CBS News Technology Analyst Larry Magid has also offered some tips for connecting to Zoom safely in an article for the nonprofit ConnectSafely.org.

Crim's hope Monday night is that this story inspires more than thoughts about safety, because he believes his group wasn't the only group targeted.