81–90 of 241 posts
I want hardware on/off switches for camera, microphone, wifi, bluetooth, and maybe even external speakers. These should be power switches, not switches that make a polite request to firmware for the firmware to act as if the devices are off.
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…
Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. The earliest standalone webcams, for instance Logitech models and the IndyCam that came with the Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation, had a 'door' that you could slide over the lens when not in use. Lenovo had this on their all in one PC's a few years ago but I don't think they kept that feature. What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? You wo…
The fact that you can forget it open, duh!
I 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.
There's quite a bit of alarm here and in the wording of the article. But no mention of HOW this exploit is applied. I mean surely they're not saying you send someone an e-mail and if they open it their webcam firmware is changed? Or visit a web page or have a flash banner ad run? You'd have to get the user to download and run a package installer that prompts for an admin password RIGHT? In other words; this isn't jus…
> You'd have to get the user to download and run a package installer that prompts for an admin password RIGHT? In theory; but a motivated party with sufficient resources could simply ("simply") author a fake OS update and deliver it to you over a compromised ISP and you'd never know the difference.
The kext is created by the same authors of the paper[2] this article is talking about. Search the paper for "iSightDefender".
[1] https://github.com/stevecheckoway/iSightDefender
[2] https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...
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…
I thought the same as well. An LED in series with the circuit powering the CMOS sensor is all that would be needed. No amount of reprogramming is going to bypass a physical circuit. This is disappointing, and I expect Apple will redesign the cameras because of it.
The fact the camera controller could be reprogrammed from user space and then used to emulate a keyboard or mouse and bypass security / a virtual machine particularly devious, and shows how hard it is to trust even known hardware.
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, includin…
There's quite a bit of alarm here and in the wording of the article. But no mention of HOW this exploit is applied. I mean surely they're not saying you send someone an e-mail and if they open it their webcam firmware is changed? Or visit a web page or have a flash banner ad run? You'd have to get the user to download and run a package installer that prompts for an admin password RIGHT? In other words; this isn't jus…
> You'd have to get the user to download and run a package installer that prompts for an admin password RIGHT? In theory; but a motivated party with sufficient resources could simply ("simply") author a fake OS update and deliver it to you over a compromised ISP and you'd never know the difference.
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…
Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. The earliest standalone webcams, for instance Logitech models and the IndyCam that came with the Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation, had a 'door' that you could slide over the lens when not in use. Lenovo had this on their all in one PC's a few years ago but I don't think they kept that feature. What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? You wo…