Zcash's more technical blogpost on the process can be found here:

https://z.cash/blog/snark-parameters.html

Personally, I found it a bit odd that they went through the effort of a multi-party computation set up, but then allowed cell phones in the room with the computers and communicated about the computation via Google Hangouts.

The articles both claim side-channel attacks can't be performed on the processors used with the recording equipment present, but my qualm is we don't know how capable nation-state actors are in that arena. The creators of Zcash conversing over Hangouts seems like a surefire way to get the kind of attention they didn't want. I mean either NSA has already beaten Zcash soundly, or they'll be surveilling the creators with extreme prejudice and all but guaranteed to catch a Google Hangout.