Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FBI director: Cover up your webcam

thehill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 307 posts

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#261

Post by yardie »

Larrikin wrote: post #47
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…

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…

> If you use one of the bookmark post-it notes, it makes it easy to remove the sticker and put it back when you're done with your video conversation.

My mother learned to do this from the IT Security team at her company. And I learned to do that from her. It simply never occurred to me that the Facetime camera, hidden on the MBP, can be turned on at anytime without the status light being activated. I keep a small box of those post-its in my go bag and share them liberally.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#262

Post by e1ven »

tedmiston wrote: post #236

Does anyone feel the need to cover their iPhone front facing camera?

Yes. I cover both the cameras on my phone with tape, and only remove it when I want to take a picture.

That said, I have a lot more faith in the security of a whitelist-based model like the App store, versus the blacklist model of a PC with antivirus.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#263

Post by Kadin »

XJOKOLAT wrote: post #165
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Completely this. 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 c…

> experienced an attempted-blackmailed by a company in India

Is this a well-known thing? I haven't heard of it before. Is there some sort of common pattern that such attacks follow? (E.g. most phishing attacks seem to be categorizable, following a number of set patterns, because the people who do them basically try to run the same attack against a lot of people at once to get one or two victims. Is this similar, or is it a matter of individual targeting?)

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#264

Post by Kadin »

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.

The warm and fuzzy feeling should have gone away immediately upon discovering that it was not a hardware mute, but instead a software-defined feature... no?

I mean, if you can turn the LED off through software, it's really no better than the little menu bar icon that every other laptop has. If it were done all in hardware, that would be cool.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#265

Post by Golddisk »

zyngaro wrote: post #182
iceman99 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know someone whose camera and microphone were taken over. A window showed on her computer where the person watching her chatted with her and told her things that he only knew because he was watching her. It scared her to death and made her cry. Beyond blackmail, it is probably close to the psychological equivalent of a stranger just suddenly appearing in your home watching you. I think that every electronic camera…

Smartphones represent a bigger security risk in that regard. Front facing rear facing, mic all ones personal data, pictures and so on.

This should definitely be a concern, but I feel like most people don't even realize that anything like that could happen. There is lots a news about webcams, baby monitors, etc. being hacked, but barely any warnings about making sure you keep your phone protected and secure, too.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#266

Post by mafribe »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #226
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just blackmail that I worry about. A hypothetical, ruthless hacker manages to install malware on a person's computer. Hell they could target certain zip codes. All the information is on the Internet. Hell, they could get a picture of your home. (By the way, Google will blure out you home, if you ask. It tends to reappear, although they claim its permanent. If your house has been sold recently, a thief/crimin…

This is all true, but wouldn't somebody who has the technical skills to pull this all of, be able to pull in a legal income far in excess of what burglary is likely to yield?

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#267

Post by gruez »

Smirnoff wrote: post #160
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.

It's not only pics of people staring into a screen. There was a case about 5-6 years ago when a guy recorded and streamed his secretly gay roomate having sex in the dorm. The gay roomate committed suicide later. Work computers can be taken home or to business trips where things can happen in the hotel after the deal is struck.

>where things can happen in the hotel after the deal is struck.

Serious question: what happens when a deal is struck? They go out to drink? They go back to their hotels? They have sex with their coworkers?

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#268

Post by ssebastianj »

I was looking for a way to cover the mics and webcam integrated in my laptop which doesn't require a tape. So, I grabbed a couple of those magnets stripes usually found on fridges and then , using a scissor, made two little rectangular stripes and a larger one. Next, I glued the little stripes on the laptop, near close the mics. The nice thing is that the large stripe covers both, the mics and webcam. For me, it's an easy way to cover/uncover fast.

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#269

Post by Kadin »

tychuz wrote: post #213
deftnerd wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gotten to the point where I only feel totally comfortable using machines I've hardened myself. My hardened laptop is an older Thinkpad laptop with LibreBoot to replace the BIOS, microphone and speakers and camera disconnected internally, removed the wireless cards, encrypted the partitions, and use Whonix as the OS. I've password protected the BIOS and it's set to boot only from the hard drive and I've also epox…

I'd rather use my closed source safe operating system like Windows instead of having open source stuff with hearthbleed like stuff open for every hacker, thanks.

Can't tell if joking...

Re: FBI director: Cover up your webcam

#270

Post by JustUhThought »

At some of my house parties I require guests to check their phone at the door. Price of admission. (I keep a landline and am ok with giving that number out as an emergency contact number). Boy does this get the conversation started.

I can tape my phn camera, but what about the other 20 phns in the room? I have no control over them to keep them from posting photos of me drinking or whatnot during a party, photos I do not want online.

From the tin-hat perspective one must do (much) better than consider their personal devices. One must consider all devices in their personal proximity .

Post reply on HN