Though fixed many years ago, there may be a lack of trust due to previous ability for malware to take snap shots without turning on the camera LED.
https://www.theregister.com/2013/12/19/apple_isight_webcam_l...
Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
21–30 of 990 posts
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#22Don't make all MacBook's with a camera that a lot of your customers want to cover up all the time.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#23> "Designed to protect your privacy, Mac notebooks have a camera indicator light to let you know when the camera is on. ... Published Date: July 02, 2020"
Perhaps Apple missed these?
2013: iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569
2016: Your Mac’s Camera Can Be Hacked https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/your-macs-camera-ca...
2016: Former NSA employee: This hack gains access to your Mac's webcam https://www.cnet.com/news/mac-webcam-hack-ex-nsa-employee/
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#24The alternative, the led, is not that good. Even if it's 100% hardware controlled, just a brief flash is enough to take a picture of you.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#25Well, being in the security field I would want to know if that light is software or hardware controlled.
It’s hardware controlled. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/14705/hard-wired-l...
Bypass attacks have been demonstrated on old hardware. Nothing most people would own today.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#26> "Designed to protect your privacy, Mac notebooks have a camera indicator light to let you know when the camera is on. ... Published Date: July 02, 2020" Perhaps Apple missed these? 2013: iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/36569 2016: Your Mac’s Camera Can Be Hacked https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/your-macs-camera-ca... 2016: Former NSA emp…
Fud, these don’t work anymore.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#27Half of my office has camera covers, honestly at this point I'd have a lot of respect for any maker who had a physical mechanism to their camera... Sort of like the original iSight https://www.coolsmartphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/is...
I've never understood physical covers, then again I am never in a compromising position in front of my laptop.
Any malware that can take pictures can record keystrokes. I want no cover so I can see the activity light because knowing the webcam is on is more important than it being on.
The (pennsylvania?) school district webcam spying scandal got kicked off because a boy noticed his webcam light coming on. If it had been covered would he have noticed?
No, the school district wouldn't have had pictures of him, but they still would have screengrabs, audio, and keystrokes and he likely never would have noticed.
Take all of the pictures of my double chin that you want.
I want to know that my webcam is coming on without my authorization so I can root out the spyware that is keylogging.
Passwords > Pics
If you're the type whose life will be ruined by pictures taken by your webcam, by all means cover it up. I'm too old and hairy to be blackmailed with nudie pics.
Having my passwords leak would seriously cramp my style, though.
And no, nobody is going to waste a zero-day that can reprogram a webcam controller to disable the light (if possible and often it is not) on a nudie-pics malware. They are going to use it to make actual money.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#28> The camera is engineered so that it can’t activate without the camera indicator light also turning on. This is how you can tell if your camera is on. I'd assume this is done in firmware for the camera module?
I still prefer a hardware solution or even a toggle, 1\2 the reason I like the cover is less for privacy and more to prevent joining meetings with the camera on when I'm not ready
removes the need to always be thinking about some random indicator being on or off
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#29> The camera is engineered so that it can’t activate without the camera indicator light also turning on. This is how you can tell if your camera is on.
Is this verifiably true? I trust Apple on security matters more than the average laptop maker, but the fact that so many of these indicator lights are software-controlled erodes my trust in basically all of them.
Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera
#30If you're going to cover it, use a sticker, like the EFF stickers here[0]. They're reusable, so you can move it to the side for meetings. I used a hard plastic MongoDB-branded sliding camera cover on a couple laptops[1], and its presence appears to have contributed to backlight bleed like this[2].
[0]: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set-ii
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/C-Slide-Sliding-Computers-Chromebooks...
