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Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#21

Post by [deleted] »

hereme888 wrote: post #11
asark wrote: post #6

Dear Apple: for Christmas I'd like physical, no-bullshit power shutoff switches for your camera and microphone on the Macbook Pro. Other devices too—if you can manage it, that'd be great. Sincerely, the people who put tape over their cameras, the people who don't because it's ugly and messes with closing the lid but wish they could, and the people who would be in one of those two camps if they understood the risk (so…

That's what the Purism laptops have. But they're linux-based (although I hear Mac OS is based on linux kernel).

[deleted]

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#22

Post by eightysixfour »

t34543 wrote: post #17
atonse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, Apple has done sort of what you're asking for, they've hooked up the physical wiring of the camera LED to the camera itself, so it is physically impossible to power the camera without the LED being turned on (as opposed to the "turn on LED" being part of firmware logic that could be hacked).

I’ve read this as well but my macbook senses ambient light and adjusts my backlight accordingly. Isn’t this through the camera - with no LED?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/347895/where-is-th...

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#23

Post by varenc »

petters wrote: post #2

It will still work on localhost, which is nice. It would be nice if it also worked on local IPs, like 192.168. . . Those do not work on Chrome, I think, which make mobile testing a bit more cumbersome.

For local development, Chrome has a flag that lets you force specific origins to be treated as secure:

  chrome://flags/#unsafely-treat-insecure-origin-as-secure
I don't think Firefox has anything equivalent though? This bug on the topic is unassigned: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1410365

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#24

Post by lucb1e »

klodolph wrote: post #14
nhumrich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could add a tunnel via iptables to just route one port on localhost to another ip

iptables on your phone? I think you would need to root your phone, if it's Android.

I think it's not unreasonable for a techie to be the admin of their own phone. (I still don't get how this is an unpopular opinion.)

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#25

Post by LeoPanthera »

mtrpcic wrote: post #10
LeoPanthera wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed that the people who tape up their laptop camera almost always still carry around a smartphone in their pocket 100% of the time.

The difference being that the smartphone camera isn't pointed at your face or room the entire time the device is in use.

Frankly I don't think it's the camera that people should be most concerned about - it's the microphone.

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#27

Post by klodolph »

t34543 wrote: post #17
atonse wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, Apple has done sort of what you're asking for, they've hooked up the physical wiring of the camera LED to the camera itself, so it is physically impossible to power the camera without the LED being turned on (as opposed to the "turn on LED" being part of firmware logic that could be hacked).

I’ve read this as well but my macbook senses ambient light and adjusts my backlight accordingly. Isn’t this through the camera - with no LED?

The ambient light sensor is right next to the camera, I think it's usually to the left. It's a bit hard to test since they're close together. Macs have had ambient light sensors for a long time. For example, take an old iMac and put it to sleep. The power light will pulse with a period of about 2s, and the brightness will depend on the ambient light level.

Edit: Just tested on my MBP. Opened photo booth, covered the camera with my thumb, shone a bright flashlight at the point just left of the camera. The display got brighter but Photo Booth showed no changes in what the camera was seeing.

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#28

Post by indalo »

progval wrote: post #26

This page's content is in a div named "mobile-pusher" with a 400px padding-right, which then gets disabled when loading a JS script from a third-party domain (ffp4g1ylyit3jdyti1hqcvtb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com). wtf?

that's wpengine's cdn, most likely the host of the blog.

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#29

Post by skybrian »

atonse wrote: post #9
asark wrote: post #6

Dear Apple: for Christmas I'd like physical, no-bullshit power shutoff switches for your camera and microphone on the Macbook Pro. Other devices too—if you can manage it, that'd be great. Sincerely, the people who put tape over their cameras, the people who don't because it's ugly and messes with closing the lid but wish they could, and the people who would be in one of those two camps if they understood the risk (so…

From my understanding, Apple has done sort of what you're asking for, they've hooked up the physical wiring of the camera LED to the camera itself, so it is physically impossible to power the camera without the LED being turned on (as opposed to the "turn on LED" being part of firmware logic that could be hacked).

That's useful, but it's not as reassuring as a hardware switch where you can see it work.

(For video, anyway. I don't see any similar solution for audio.)

Re: Camera and microphone require HTTPS in Firefox 68

#30

Post by XCSme »

atonse wrote: post #9
asark wrote: post #6

Dear Apple: for Christmas I'd like physical, no-bullshit power shutoff switches for your camera and microphone on the Macbook Pro. Other devices too—if you can manage it, that'd be great. Sincerely, the people who put tape over their cameras, the people who don't because it's ugly and messes with closing the lid but wish they could, and the people who would be in one of those two camps if they understood the risk (so…

From my understanding, Apple has done sort of what you're asking for, they've hooked up the physical wiring of the camera LED to the camera itself, so it is physically impossible to power the camera without the LED being turned on (as opposed to the "turn on LED" being part of firmware logic that could be hacked).

I remember there was a story saying that it's possible, via software only (due to a "bug" and some "poor" hardware design), to turn on the camera without activating the LED.
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