191–200 of 554 posts
I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what. Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.
I can see why some people might be concerned about the camera, but I'm far more concerned by the microphone. There's far more sensitive and actionable information that can be gathered from me that way! I'm glad that macOS started putting a light in the menubar when the microphone is in use, but I'd prefer to have unhackable hardware for that instead.
I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what. Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.
An indicator light hardwired is nice but I apparently can't trust hardware manufacturers to design it properly. My work laptop (HP Dragonfly) has a physical blocker that closes over the camera when I haven't explicitly pressed the button that enables the camera. The blocker is black and white stripes so it's very obvious when it's covering the sensor. This should absolutely be the security standard we all strive for…
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I believe that it’s not literally hardwired in the sense that powering up the camera also powers up the camera LED, and instead this relies on logic in the hopefully un-flashable camera+LED firmware. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. You need some logic to enforce things like a minimum LED duration that keeps the LED on for a couple seconds even if the camera is only used to capture one brief frame. I have a script th…
A capacitor can hold enough charge to power led for noticable amount of time even if powered for a brief moment, no logic needed
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No firmware is required. Macbooks manufactured since 2014 turn on the LED whenever any power is supplied to the camera sensor, and force the LED to remain on for at least 3 seconds. (Source: I architected the feature)
Thanks for your reply — yourself as the Source can only make me feel flattered then for you responding to me. > Macbooks manufactured since 2014 turn on the LED whenever any power is supplied to the camera sensor, and force the LED to remain on for at least 3 seconds. That convinced me originally I think, good old days! I'd almost forgotten about it. The way you phrased it, it sounded like 50% OS concern to me. But i…
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They are hardwired on Macbooks. From Daring Fireball, quoting an email from an Apple engineer. > All cameras after [2008] were different: The hardware team tied the LED to a hardware signal from the sensor: If the (I believe) vertical sync was active, the LED would light up. There is NO firmware control to disable/enable the LED. The actual firmware is indeed flashable, but the part is not a generic part and there ar…
>The actual firmware is indeed flashable, but the part is not a generic part and there are mechanisms in place to verify the image being flashed. That might make it harder to develop a hack, but one would hope that if the hardware team tied the LED to a hardware signal, it would not matter if the firmware were reflashed.
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I believe that it’s not literally hardwired in the sense that powering up the camera also powers up the camera LED, and instead this relies on logic in the hopefully un-flashable camera+LED firmware. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. You need some logic to enforce things like a minimum LED duration that keeps the LED on for a couple seconds even if the camera is only used to capture one brief frame. I have a script th…
I happen to have some first-hand knowledge around the subject! In 2014 someone did a talk[0] on disabling the camera on some older Macbooks. It was fairly trivial, basically just reflashing the firmware that controlled the LED. I worked on the security team at Apple at the time and in response to this I attempted to do the same for more modern Macbooks. I won't go into the results but the decision was made to re-arch…
I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what. Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.
In the past I've used microsnitch on macos which tells you when the mic or camera are activated, but macos seems to have support for this baked into the os now. In zoom calls the menu bar shows what is active. If this can be sidestepped and avoided in software, and the camera can be activated without any indicator, I do not know. If direct access can be done, and you don't need to go through some apple api to hit the…