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The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

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Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#161

Post by kuschku »

alanwatts wrote: post #142
Digit-Al wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little silly to me. A laptop camera is normally facing into the room, but the camera on your phone will normally be facing upwards, so surely you have nothing to worry about unless you are standing naked over your phone. Actually, that's given me a great idea to secure my phone from hackers. Stand over it naked and waggle my sack about - that's one camera they'll never ever hack again lol

Every time you use your phone your camera is on your face. Facial microexpressions could be automatically detected and analyzed based on the content the user was viewing at the time. This information could provide a detailed emotional picture of the individual as it relates to different stimuli.

Starbug (CCC hacker) recently found something even better.

You can use the reflection in the eye as keylogger for, say, PIN entry dialogs.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#162

Post by SixSigma »

marcosdumay wrote: post #150
SixSigma wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly because there's no real alternative to carrying smartphone yet. And yet somehow, I manage

Well, if you manage it by using feature phones, I have bad news for you... But if you do indeed manage to not carry a mobile phone at all, yep, you are safe.

I moved abroad in January and didn't have a SIM, and time went on and I didn't get a SIM and now, 5 months later, I never miss my phone.

My contract expires in two weeks, I am not going to renew it.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#163

Post by dsmithatx »

If I were director of the FBI I'd have an internet device secured by the sharp minds I hire. Probably more than one to route through and log packets, especially outgoing ones. I'd think as director of the FBI you could even get something like that setup on your personal laptop. I've been using OpenBSD, Snort, and also FreeBSD/PFSense to monitor my networks for at least 16 years even my own personal ones. The fact such a high profile target (and his team) can't figure out technology in this way seriously let's us know how inept and incompetent they must be.

If he worries someone is watching him through his webcam I wonder how he feels about the microphone? Does he talk about top secret things in front of laptops?

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#164

Post by zekevermillion »

In Russian FSB top officials use only typewriters, and physically destroy the ribbons when done. Compare to our security officials, current and former. The political appointees who helm our security state bureaucracies bring to mind one's kindly uncle who still emails from AOL and forwards pop econ items from yahoo news.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#165

Post by aftbit »

krylon wrote: post #97
rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

My mother used to be a police officer, and she once came back from a visit to the department of the interior in our federal state (of Germany) and told me about a room they had there (maybe several) for meeting where sensitive issues are discussed. What sets them apart - among other things, I guess - is that there are no phone lines, no network, and for meetings people are not allowed to bring telephones/smartphones,…

For the interested, the US intelligence services call these "SCIFs": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Inform...

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#166

Post by coliveira »

white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty easy to create a virus or something that access the data at the moment it is used. In my opinion there are cases in which using tape on a webcam is far superior than using complicated encryption strategies.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#167

Post by colejohnson66 »

HappyTypist wrote: post #84
colejohnson66 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people ask why the light isn't automatically turned on when it's in use. I think the problem is it's easier to turn it on through software than hardware. Plus, if you can treat the webcam as just a microphone, then anytime a device accesses the microphone (games for example), the light would turn on. Not a problem, per se, but the light would be turning on and off a lot if you use a push to talk game. Someth…

Just make it have a 3 second fade time where instead of the LED being at 100% intensity, have it as 75% intensity so it's not distracting by coming on and off.

So, make it "breath" like the MacBook charger light? While that's a great idea, good luck getting a company to implement that in hardware. I'm sure some privacy/FOSS focused company will come up with something, but for the majority of companies, it's not cost effective compared to just writing a driver that just tells the webcam to turn the light on and of.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#168

Post by deftnerd »

rdl wrote: post #29

I care about audio so much more than video, and text/keys/etc captured from the machine even more. As long as my screen and keyboard are out of the frame of the camera, I don't really care about it getting RATed. At worst, you'll see me naked, or making angry/etc. faces at someone on irc or email. While embarrassing it would be less bad than most of what you could accomplish by stealing actual information. OTOH, carr…

I typically buy older Lenovo laptops that I can put LibreBoot on, an open-source BIOS replacement. Then I open it up and disconnect the speakers, microphone, and camera. When I close the laptop back up, I usually place tamper-resistant seals over several locations.

For an OS, I run Whonix and have it configured so the system wipes the memory and shuts down immediately if anything foreign is attached or removed from USB.

Since I don't use any eSata or Firewire devices, if those ports exist I epoxy over them. There are too many ways to dump memory with direct DMA access.

If you were serious about a custom run of security-focused laptops, I think you would have a market for them. Dell and Lenovo just subcontract with manufacturers in China and it wouldn't be too difficult to contact one and give them the specs and do a custom run of laptops. Considering putting actual hardware switches for both the Wifi and Bluetooth.

I would certainly buy one!

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#169

Post by IMcD23 »

coliveira wrote: post #166
white-flame wrote: post #2

To me, Comey is a man who has lost the goal in pursuit of his particular mission. Defense, intelligence, policing, all these things exist in order to uphold the constitution, protect the "American ideals", etc. Many of his statements pretty directly show that he doesn't care about the collateral damage to innocent people's privacy or any founding principles, he just wants his mission to be unhindered. It's the same m…

I don't understand why smart people have so much trust on encryption mechanisms. For any information to be useful, it has to be converted in some way. For example, if it is an image it has to be unconverted and presented as pixels in a screen. If you're typing an email it has to come unencrypted from a keyboard. Encryption only make it difficult to access the information once it is transmitted, but it is still pretty…

While it isn't smart to assume that if its encrypted in transit, it can't be viewed by someone else on the other end, it is still necessary to have encryption in transit. You want to minimize the amount of places the data can be accessed by a third party.

Re: The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

#170

Post by tpallarino »

SixSigma wrote: post #162
marcosdumay wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you manage it by using feature phones, I have bad news for you... But if you do indeed manage to not carry a mobile phone at all, yep, you are safe.

I moved abroad in January and didn't have a SIM, and time went on and I didn't get a SIM and now, 5 months later, I never miss my phone. My contract expires in two weeks, I am not going to renew it.

Pretty inspiring to read, I want to throw my phone off a damn bridge most of the time.
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