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FBI director: Cover up your webcam

thehill.com

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Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#251

Post by Bartweiss »

stinkytaco wrote: post #240
beachstartup wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this happens a lot through low tech means. they'll just case a house and note the owners' movements until they recognize a pattern. the only real solution to this is good insurance and good luck.

But that at least requires some human investment of time and movement. Someone has to case your house and sit there for however long it takes, risking discovery, boredom, opportunity cost, etc. Wholesale information theft is another level. Someone in a different state or country has access not only to me, but potentially hundreds of people's details, without ever leaving their home. And then they can leverage a whole…

Surely it's at least as much human effort to compromise a specific webcam, identify the house it's tied to, monitor it extensively, and then rob/assault the owners?

Obviously there are other reasons to worry about webcam access, but "they could spy on me to set up a robbery" is exceedingly low on my list since it just recreates a pattern that doesn't involve a computer.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#253

Post by Bartweiss »

barking wrote: post #146
lostlogin wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Also the mandatory upvoted comment 'why are you using vb6'.

"You should just tell the client that you'll rewrite everything from scratch in Rust rather than making this two-line fix."

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#254

Post by stinkytaco »

Bartweiss wrote: post #251
stinkytaco wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that at least requires some human investment of time and movement. Someone has to case your house and sit there for however long it takes, risking discovery, boredom, opportunity cost, etc. Wholesale information theft is another level. Someone in a different state or country has access not only to me, but potentially hundreds of people's details, without ever leaving their home. And then they can leverage a whole…

Surely it's at least as much human effort to compromise a specific webcam, identify the house it's tied to, monitor it extensively, and then rob/assault the owners? Obviously there are other reasons to worry about webcam access, but "they could spy on me to set up a robbery" is exceedingly low on my list since it just recreates a pattern that doesn't involve a computer.

I think it's more about the mass dissemination of that information. We've seen how easy it is to "Dox" someone without much information. One person might not be able to glean much, but what happens if 4Chan gets a hold of that data and has decided they don't like me?

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#255

Post by Bartweiss »

jdavis703 wrote: post #235
greenspot wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blackmailing people with pictures taken from webcams How can one blackmail a person with webcam pictures where the person just stares into a screen? If you mean NSFW pics I don't think they're done with a computer's webcam cam. Nowadays, people use phones for that use case.

I'm not naked when I'm using the computer. When I am naked my laptop is closed and most likely in my bag. I guess a lot of people keep their laptop open on their nightstand or something?

Open all night on a table/desk certainly isn't rare. If you're in a dorm room or a studio apartment that can mean "staring straight at the bed".

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#256

Post by Bartweiss »

exmuslim wrote: post #100
mikeash wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

HN's own r/shittyaskscience, I like it.

I would enjoy a sporadic "Shitty Ask HN" thread.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#257

Post by Bartweiss »

stinkytaco wrote: post #248
akerro wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)_/¯

I think you've created a strawman here. It's about risk assessment and ease of implementation. Taping the webcam is easy to do, effective and easy to undo. It protects against a real, not theoretical attack. It has meaningful value. Not using Windows 10 might also have meaningful value and protect against real, not theoretical attacks, but would be difficult to do or undo. I could also point out that you are more lik…

I mean, I think it's a worthwhile comment even granting this. When people are worrying about the computer scare of the moment, they tend not to realize that the threat surface is so massive that they're certainly, inevitably vulnerable somewhere.

No security habit short of Ludditism was going to keep people safe from Heartbleed. And it does feel a little on the nose for Comey to be pushing a security 'story' that's conveniently removed from crucial steps like "update your software regularly". I was irritated to see him describe that as "caring about people's personal security" when his stance on all other tech topics is to make people give up security for access.

None of which makes taping up a webcam wrong, of course. It's easy, it's nontechnical, and it eliminates a whole (very real) class of threat at a single stroke. That's actually pretty good, and webcam spying/blackmail certainly does happen.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#258

Post by xapata »

drvdevd wrote: post #168
Sylos wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The other issue with the webcam taping is that it is becoming less and less of a viable way to even keep yourself from being video recorded. For example, what about the cameras on your smart phone? 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 t…

> Ubiquitus video/audio recording and real time processing. ... So what are we left with in terms of privacy?

A new sense of what privacy is. It is increasingly rare that someone should have a sense of privacy or anonymity while in a public place.

It's reasonable to worry about government abuse of power from monopoly access to the full aggregation of surveillance data (even if that data was not originally intended as surveillance). Many people advocate for damming the flood of data, but this is futile. A more effective solution is to end the monopoly of access -- public aggregation of surveillance data. Twitch for everything.

Don't worry quite yet. Wait until we all have wearable cameras.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#259

Post by fencepost »

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…

Of interesting note: ThinkPads have (had?) independent mute, volume and microphone buttons with LEDs to indicate volume or microphone muting. It's clearly at least partially software or driver driven, because with Windows 10 microphone muting is no longer functional.

The warm and fuzzy feeling that discovery gave me is why my daily driver is still on Win7 since I almost always have both audio directions muted.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#260

Post by pricechild »

fencepost wrote: post #259
djsumdog wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of interesting note: ThinkPads have (had?) independent mute, volume and microphone buttons with LEDs to indicate volume or microphone muting. It's clearly at least partially software or driver driven, because with Windows 10 microphone muting is no longer functional. The warm and fuzzy feeling that discovery gave me is why my daily driver is still on Win7 since I almost always have both audio directions muted.

Surely that leaves open the possibility Windows7 was always in control and if hacked, could lie to you?

The fact that Windows10 breaks it surely suggests it's a software feature?

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