261–270 of 554 posts
EDIT: I keep a piece of black electric tape over any of my notebook's webcams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 may be the oddball here, but that 3 second duration does not comfort me. The only time I would notice it is if I am sitting in front of the computer. While someone snapping a photo of me while working is disconcerting, it is not the end of the world. Someone snapping photos while I am away from the screen is more troublesome. (Or it would be if my computer was facing an open space, which it doesn't.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There seems to be widespread anxiety regarding cameras, but hardly anyone ever talks about microphones. Are conversations not much more privileged information than potentially seeing someone in their underwear?
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-microphone...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
- The LED is in parallel, but with the sensor voltage supply, not the chip
- Camera sensor idle voltage = low voltage for the LED (be it with stepping if needed)
- Camera sensor active voltage = high voltage for the LED (again, stepping if needed)
- little capacitor that holds enough charge to run the LED for ~3 seconds after camera goes back to idle voltage.
Good luck hacking that :)
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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…
> The blocker is black and white stripes On my ThinkPad it’s instead painted with a red dot. Because, obviously, the conventional meaning of a red dot appearing on a camera is “not recording”.
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I believe it is possible to turn a speaker into a microphone. Found a paper which claims to do just that[0]. So, there is no safety anywhere? SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit It is possible to manipulate the headphones (or earphones) connected to a computer, silently turning them into a pair of eavesdropping microphones - with software alone. The same is also true for some types of loudspea…
Despite this being a 2016 paper, it's worth noting that this is true in general and has been common(ish) knowledge among electrical engineers for decades. Highschoolers and undergrads in electrical engineering classes often discover this independently. What's notable about this paper is only that they demonstrate it as a practical attack, rather than just a neat fun fact of audio engineering. As a fun fact, an LED ca…
what would be even better is PHYSICAL HARDWARE POWER SWITCHES for microphones, speakers, and webcam
this ought to be a manufacturer regulation, no more ridiculousness
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> and no firmware is involved in enforcing the LED stay on for 3 seconds after a single frame is captured. I may be the oddball here, but that 3 second duration does not comfort me. The only time I would notice it is if I am sitting in front of the computer. While someone snapping a photo of me while working is disconcerting, it is not the end of the world. Someone snapping photos while I am away from the screen is m…
Turning off camera LEDs and recording video is an old hack and old news. This is for a specific firmware and computer model and attack surface via USB to update the webcam's firmware, so I am assuming that makes it news? EDIT: I keep a piece of black electric tape over any of my notebook's webcams.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> and no firmware is involved in enforcing the LED stay on for 3 seconds after a single frame is captured. I may be the oddball here, but that 3 second duration does not comfort me. The only time I would notice it is if I am sitting in front of the computer. While someone snapping a photo of me while working is disconcerting, it is not the end of the world. Someone snapping photos while I am away from the screen is m…