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Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#21

Post by daeken »

wil421 wrote: post #11

I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future. Months ago I read about a company that rented laptops for people to make payments on and eventually own. They installed spy software so they could locate the laptops had the user not made a monthly payment. Employees were spying on users while they were having sex and other things. This wasnt on MBPs but they still…

> I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future.

A tiny piece of black electrical tape blends in nicely and won't leave gunk on your bezel.

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#22

Post by seiji »

Notes from the article: they demonstrate it on a black macbook from 2008. They don't have a "modern" version of their disable-webcam-LED exploit.

The victim they talked to mentioned "she never saw the light on her laptop go on" — that doesn't mean it didn't, it just means she could have just not been looking for it.

Ideally, your webcam LED will be wired with your webcam itself. For your webcam sensor to be powered up, the LED will be powered up as a physical requirement of sending power to the webcam sensor. Many lesser-engineered webcams have software controlled LEDs (kinect bar, generic egg-shaped webcams) that don't even take "hacks" or "malware" to disable LEDs—you just run "turn led off."

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#23

Post by RBerenguel »

x0054 wrote: post #9

Honestly, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to create a camera chip not susceptible to any software hack. The camera sensor needs electrical current to work. Simply place the LED inline or in parallel to the camera and you are done. Any time current is sent to the camera sensor, the LED cant help it but light up. My knowledge of electronics is limited, but I know for a fact that this can be achieved without th…

IIRC, in my old Macbook (early 2008) the led is actually inlined. Some machines had a weird hardware bug that shorted this area and sometimes the led would go on... and the camera would be useless until next reboot (mine was one of these, didn't realise until ~after 6 months of owning it

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#24

Post by wil421 »

daeken wrote: post #21
wil421 wrote: post #11

I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future. Months ago I read about a company that rented laptops for people to make payments on and eventually own. They installed spy software so they could locate the laptops had the user not made a monthly payment. Employees were spying on users while they were having sex and other things. This wasnt on MBPs but they still…

> I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future. A tiny piece of black electrical tape blends in nicely and won't leave gunk on your bezel.

I will try that. If anything fishy happens the camera is getting an ice pick. Problem solved I have barely used it.

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#25

Post by [deleted] »

daeken wrote: post #21
wil421 wrote: post #11

I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future. Months ago I read about a company that rented laptops for people to make payments on and eventually own. They installed spy software so they could locate the laptops had the user not made a monthly payment. Employees were spying on users while they were having sex and other things. This wasnt on MBPs but they still…

> I really would hate to taint my MBP with ugly duct tap on the camera, but I may have to in the future. A tiny piece of black electrical tape blends in nicely and won't leave gunk on your bezel.

[deleted]

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#26

Post by lucaspiller »

nodata wrote: post #15

On early Macbook webcams it was electrically impossible to turn on the webcam without activating the light next to it. I'll see if I can find a source. Edit: the story refers to precisely these early Macbooks. Yikes.

Any ideas why they changed it? Surely the circuit would be simpler like this rather than having the LED hooked up to the microchip and software controlling it.

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#27

Post by Ben-G »

Interesting to note: iPhone and iPad and a lot of Android devices don't have a camera indicator LED. While it is difficult to distribute iOS Apps outside the AppStore (where Apple would hopefully reject an App accessing camera information without informing the user) this totally could happen with Android Apps distributed outside of App Stores.

A while ago I wrote a component for the iPad that emulates the proximity sensor of the iPhone by measuring the brightness of images the the front camera captured. There was no way for the user to detect that I was actually capturing images.

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#28

Post by DanBC »

x0054 wrote: post #9

Honestly, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to create a camera chip not susceptible to any software hack. The camera sensor needs electrical current to work. Simply place the LED inline or in parallel to the camera and you are done. Any time current is sent to the camera sensor, the LED cant help it but light up. My knowledge of electronics is limited, but I know for a fact that this can be achieved without th…

Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. Not like all the other LEDs that are on all the time and are mostly pointless.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/webcam-spy-settleme...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386599,00.asp

> When the school district investigated the case, it found other incidents of webcam spying, and notified the students involved, including Levin. According to the lawsuit, filed in Eastern Pennsylvania District Court, Levin's younger brother commented on a light near the webcam that appeared to go on and off at odd times. His mother "dismissed the idea as absurd," but it appears he was right.

Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

#29

Post by bithive123 »

Zikes wrote: post #14
auctiontheory wrote: post #8

One of my friends always keeps her MacBook open, and had Skype set up to auto-answer video calls. (Until I fixed that for her.) She's a very educated professional woman who teaches at a university you've heard of. In other words, HN readers might come up with defensive hacks, but 99% of the population is completely vulnerable to all kinds of spying, whether government or stalker, and the situation can only get worse…

One could argue that devising an effective privacy strategy to build into new device categories would be a waste of time until the devices are sufficiently popular enough to warrant the effort. Now that we've reached that tipping point there should be sufficient interest from an adequate number of skilled and educated people to begin to work on solving this problem.

Display-mounted cameras should have a sliding lens cap built in which can close (but not open) itself after a configurable period of non-use.
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