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Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

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961–970 of 990 posts

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#961

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I even have to trust Apple and physics here? Why can't Apple just provide a physical lid for the camera to disable it. Why even take that chance.

Because a physical lid is ugly and inelegant.

I happen to have (collecting dust somewhere...) one of those old Firewire webcams Apple made. It has a physical shutter you can open and close by rotating the front. It's about as beautiful and elegant as it gets.

If Apple still cared about beautiful and elegant products, it could surely find a way to incorporate a miniaturized version of that in a Macbook.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#963
post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. Heartbleed is my go-to example why we should be skeptical of the security of all software.

If you don't trust an open-source program due to the possibility of e.g. Heartbleed, then it's only reasonable to trust closed-source software (e.g. the majority of macOS, including in all likelihood the parts of it controlling the camera) even less.

Then we agree.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one power up the camera for only a few milliseconds? Enough to take a still photo, without the LED getting bright enough for a human to notice?

This used to be a thing, where you’d flash the LED briefly and hope the user didn’t notice. But new Macs prevent this by having a minimum duration the light will remain on.

FWIW I tried using the command line utility isightcapture on my 2019 macbook, and the LED turned on for 4-5 seconds and I got a dialog asking if I wanted to allow access to the camera. So this seems to be true. I still have a camera cover though

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#966
post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think a hardware switch that disabled the mic and camera is the best route. Engineers would have to be honest in actually connecting the switch directly to the camera rather than resorting to some firmware tom-foolery. Then you could wire the indicator to the switch as a visual reminder that your camera is attached to your PC.

The Librem laptops and phones from Purism all have such hardware switches.

But only one switch for both camera and mic; I am sitting right in front of one. Better than nothing but not always what you want. Same for for bluetooth and wireless which I find even more unpractical.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#967
post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, as I said, us hardware prevention. It stops someone from recording you, it also stops you from knowing someone tried to record you (i.e. hardware detection). The hacking consequences I care about are having my bank accounts drained, not having my picture taken.

This is what audit records are for. Unless you expect the bad guys to respect your schedule, you won't be around to see the LED light.

Google "rootkit". This is a great example of theoretical security vs actual security. In theory, people review logs on their personal machines and hunt for bad guys. In practice, virtually nobody has ever done that. The reality is that personal laptop compromises are discovered through side-effects. Heat, sluggishness, webcam turning on, accounts being hijacked.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They indicated “no thicker than a sheet of paper” and that’s far thicker than a sheet of paper, and incompressible too.

This is new guidance, which I'm glad they issued. These kinds of covers worked on previous MBP models with no trouble, though.

The small leather adhesive dot I use on mine is extremely compressed and dented by the case, and that’s a 2017 MBP, so I’m kind of shocked people are using hard plastic ones at all.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#969
post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use curtains, but only to isolate the light in the morning. This is a tech forum. I'm much more embarrassed not being able to use Zoom for the first time, rather than a distributed team see me laying on a couch for a brief moment.

Sound very insecure.

Yes I'm more insecure about my qualifications than my appearance.

You people sound insecure about your appearance.

Re: Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

#970
post #947
post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust you absolutely and toally on this. Why wouldn't I? But if you had your entire net worth riding on it, would you trust yourself to be infallibly correct or would you trust something along the lines of a post-it note to be completely sure? You know, if your life depended on it on every single possible model of apple laptop in all circumstances imaginable? (Do we include if your laptop was interecepted and alter…

Devil's advocate: If our threat model includes your laptop being tampered with by an evil maid competent enough to imperceptibly modify the camera LED circuit, couldn't they just install a separate camera elsewhere (maybe in one of the speakers)?

Or they put you to sleep in a way where you have no memory and place the bug inside your body. You can go on like that forever. So leave your doors unlocked because you can't ever be 'safe' right? Obviously not.

There's a scale from dead easy to more difficult to very dificult. Easier to get you is a bigger problem. Cheap & easy to prevent - well why wouldn't you? It's asymetric.

Wouldn't you feel hilariously stupid if someone modified your camera circuit when interecepting your laptop and you actually didn't stick a post-it over it to thwart their dastardly plans.

The point here is making the kind of claims made about LEDs and camera circuits is really, really easy when telling other people what is not a risk. When you carry that risk - ie "all possible models and other threat vectors" suddenly you should not be so sure anymore. A physical cover is better, easier, cheaper and basically infallible for what it is advertised to do. Asymetric payoffs are worth noting. A genunine plausible risk scenarios are all you need to take a /trivial/ mitigation step.

Apple making trivial mitigation steps harder is really, really, really stupid. In fact, beyond merely stupid, it's unwittignly and incompetently user-hostile. (Unless you think they're design process has been infiltrated by the NSA or something, which I guess is at least possible, but I think it unlikely in the face of utterly incompetent idiocy - which Apple do display from time to time).

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