161–170 of 307 posts
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If it was on my radar I would much rather have an LED for microphone active (laptop and phone) than webcam - precisely because I can put a sticker on webcam. Better still a hardware switch.
Maybe a toggle for enabling/disabling device driver for mic?
Isn't this really just a sign of flawed hardware design? In my opinion hardware should be designed so that the camera LED lamp should always be lit if the camera is used. If there is a malfunction with the LED, then the camera should also not work. Also there should be a hardware LED for when the microphone is being used which should work in the same fashion for laptops with built-in microphones. In the webcam driver…
In my opinion hardware should be designed so that the camera LED lamp should always be lit if the camera is used. That would only inform the user that the camera is on, and that isn't good enough. If the user is paying active attention to the computer then they can take action, but if they're not then they can't - noticing an LED has switched on when you're busy doing something else in the same room is quite unlikely…
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What would be the point of that? What he's describing is something that also happened (with far greater, more rage-inducing frequency) on tech forums before SO existed.
I believe it is a joke.
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In terms of electronics it is fairly trivial and it can be inspected by eye (or microscope) if the manufacturer decides to not encapsulate everything on a chip (which presumably would be the point of such a feature). Just have the only positive voltage rail going to the camera be the same one that is directly powering the LED. The firmware will be turning this rail on and off, hence turning the camera and the LED on…
Idle though on possible attack vectors: Convince the firmware to use a lower voltage, one that doesn't hit the breakover voltage on the LED but still powers the camera. Strobe the line, get snapshots without the LED doing more than very faintly glowing.
Your second idea is even more scary and realistic.
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…
You're displaying a common trope I see sometimes with security: > "because this particular thing does affect me personally, it doesn't matter. And because it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter at all" Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams is not theoretical. It happens[0] and it's good advice to tape up your cam. It may not affect you personally, but it may affect your wife, daughter, or sister in…
As someone who was profiled and eventually experienced an attempted-blackmailed by a company in India (employer details gained among other things) - everything seems inconsequential ("I've done nothing wrong"), until it is used, abused (and lies added to) to threaten you.
It doesn't matter whether things are true or not. What matters is, when someone gains details about you, the story and lies they can spin. The cost, distress, and difficulty in trying to resolve and take control of the story can be incredible.
Your personal details should remain just that.
Don't be complacent.
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Idle though on possible attack vectors: Convince the firmware to use a lower voltage, one that doesn't hit the breakover voltage on the LED but still powers the camera. Strobe the line, get snapshots without the LED doing more than very faintly glowing.
LED activation voltage is less than what cameras typically require.
I keep mine covered because I work remotely a lot and I don't want to accidentally shirtless video chat someone from bed when I meant to make a different type of call.
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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 a…
If we aren't there already, the direction of technology seems to me to be: "cameras all around, everywhere, 360 degrees all the time." Ubiquitus video/audio recording and real time processing.
So what are we left with in terms of privacy? I believe we can only hope to control how data is used in this aggregate sense to some extent or other. If even that.
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Written backwards so you can read it in the mirror, right? They wouldn't be able to read it, since they get a non-mirrored image.
Unfortunately, I only use palindromic passwords made up of symmetric letters, so they're readable both directly and in the mirror.