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FBI director: Cover up your webcam

thehill.com

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Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#131

Post by greglindahl »

williamscales wrote: post #109
greglindahl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you tell if it can be subverted? Here's a paper about subverting the Apple Mac camera led indicator from userland: https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...

If the LED were simply wired in series somehow with the mic power supply I imagine it would be easier to tell. The problem with the Mac LED indicator was that it was controlled by a microcontroller that was ultimately accessible via user land. It's harder to surreptitiously bypass a simple electrical circuit.

Sorry, but how do you tell the difference? I agree that the Mac LED indicator was poorly designed, but...

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#132

Post by listentojohan »

hacksonx wrote: post #108
School-Cotton wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...do I have to spell it out for you?

Please spell it out for me. Seems being 0001 1001 years old hasn't opened up my mind to such basic concepts. Also, what about the front camera on my phone?

Also, the camera on your phone rarely points out towards the whole room.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#133

Post by Sylos »

akerro wrote: post #117
6t6t6t6 wrote: post #6

From all they ways I can be spied, the webcam is the one that concerns me the least. At the end, all they will see is a bearded man staring to the front. May they be able to see me naked? Well, probably, but I honestly don't think that they will make a lot of money by selling my naked pictures... My wife tells me that I still look good, but I suspect that she is being nice to me. What would scare more is that they ma…

1. Use Facebook 2. Use DropBox 3. Use Skype 4. Use Google services, always logged in 5. Use Windows 10 6. Use Google Chrome 7. Tape webcam ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's what typically happens for people who have no grasp of data. They understand what a camera is, that it takes pictures and that they don't want something to be able to take pictures of them at any given time. They do not understand the whole clusterfuck of data that's drawn about them from every other service and how it can be put together to reconstruct details about them that they do not want others to know about.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#135

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

lostlogin wrote: post #120
mschuetz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This particular thing doesn't matter because I don't need it. And because I don't need it, nobody needs it at all" This is all that I hate about stackoverflow.

You don't know SO rage until you get a case of a small, inconsequential problem which is of vital importance to you. After heaps of searching someone else has posted the same issue on SO. Then reposted a while later with "Don't worry, fixed".

That's just a bot someone made. It scrapes SO, constructs a model of question text and generates new questions from the model. Then, after a random number of days it posts that "Don't worry, fixed" you've seen.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#136

Post by pshc »

listentojohan wrote: post #132
hacksonx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please spell it out for me. Seems being 0001 1001 years old hasn't opened up my mind to such basic concepts. Also, what about the front camera on my phone?

Also, the camera on your phone rarely points out towards the whole room.

Oops. I use a dock. Mine always does.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#137

Post by mrSugar »

djsumdog wrote: post #113
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's more of a statement than a meaningful security measure.

That webcam might have a microphone. Your laptop has one too. Neither have a little LED to tell if they're on (the one on most cameras isn't hard wired to the sensor. You can sometimes turn it off in the drivers). There's a microphone in your phone, in your tablet, your PS4 controller, your land line (why do you still have one of those?!), that USB gaming headset you left plugged in, your fitbit, your overpriced voic…

The potential for burglars to get in through windows is a huge attack vector. And yet we lock our door.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#138

Post by kaybe »

jasoncchild wrote: post #83
Larrikin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that what the webcam captures is probably the least important thing a hacker can get but I do it because it is visible. Protecting your privacy should NOT be weird and a sticker over your webcam is a very visible way of showing that to the public. When people ask why I do it, its a good opportunity to educate them on the capabilities of the US government, other nation-state actors, and hackers in general. If t…

Why does everyone strip down in front of thier computers? When I'm done using my laptop I close it.

My room has 30 deg C in summer, which is a big incentive to be less than fully clothed.
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