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WEAKNESS IS STRENGTH
Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
41–50 of 241 posts
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I've heard a drill works well.
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#43I would be more concerned about the microphone. I can easily cover the camera with tape. Also, random pictures of me programming or reading HN are probably less damaging audio recordings of conversations I might be having.
I use a cut-out piece of postit note for the camera, and a small piece of etape for the microphones -- seems stable, and both are pretty easy to take off without leaving too much spooge behind.
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#44... The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror ... The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. (1.1.3)
Oceanians live in a constant state of being monitored by the Party, through the use of advanced, invasive technology.
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. (1.5.65)
What's aggregated about you? Are you against this monitoring that protects us from fear and terrorism? Did you state that in some online devious hacker forum?
INFORM and VOTE
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, includin…
"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." No longer plastering devices with semi-pointless LEDs would help. Harddrive activity? Wifi? Bluetooth? I don't think all these lights are really necessary. Throw one on the power cable maybe, and a few to backlight the keyboard, but otherwise only use…
Hey, I find the hard drive light very helpful in determining whether my system is thrashing for virtual memory, or likely stuck on some CPU-bound process.
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#46Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#47And I thought I was clever for turning the light on for only a tiny split-second to take a picture... (I wasn't writing malware. I put the program on my own laptop before I sent it in to be serviced. http://ecritters.biz/applecarefacility/ )
It actually is clever. I like this "go around instead of breaking" approach very much. Two similar cases:
A car magazine claimed they discovered a serious weakness in a particular brand of a steering wheel lock. The company made a series of improvements to the lock and challenged the magazine to demo their hack. The magazine guy approached the new lock, gave it a good hard yank and it came off the steering wheel.
Another one was the Flash fullscreen mode. Flash used to (probably still does) display a hard-coded warning after the app went full screen - obviously to prevent Flash apps from impersonating browsers, OSes and so on. I've seen a demo that took advantage of the fact that the text was an overlay over what the app displayed.
The demo app just went full screen and printed lots of messages in the same font as the Flash warning, all over the screen. The overlay was still visible (Flash made it impossible to hide or cover) but it was basically impossible to read. The demo then pretended it did a Windows restart - it was pretty scary :-)
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#48Does anyone know of how to secure against this type of thing (other than tape)?
NSA information assurance guidelines specify that one should cut the cables to all unnecessary IO devices before deploying hardware in a sensitive environment.
Not sure where that one is, but there is a wealth of data here: http://www.nsa.gov/ia/mitigation_guidance/index.shtml
It's safe to assume they left a few things out, but part of NSA's mission is to protect the communications of US interests (government and enterprise) so it actually is part of their mandate to give advice like this.
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#49As usual - what's possible to exploit will be exploited. There's really only 1 solid solution to this: Open software and open hardware.
I'm just playing devil's advocate here... Your argument for "open software/hardware" doesn't apply here. There was an exploit found in almost 6+ year old hardware/software. Has nothing to do with the fact if it is open or not. "Open" != "non-exploitable" || "flawless".
Edited for bad boolean.
Re: Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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." No longer plastering devices with semi-pointless LEDs would help. Harddrive activity? Wifi? Bluetooth? I don't think all these lights are really necessary. Throw one on the power cable maybe, and a few to backlight the keyboard, but otherwise only use…
Hey, I find the hard drive light very helpful in determining whether my system is thrashing for virtual memory, or likely stuck on some CPU-bound process.
99% of computer users have no idea what you just typed.
HDD light blinking? That means it's working correctly. Am I right?