This is well known in the security community, when I was at Bromium around 2011 or 2012 this was shown in internal demos. And the X230 is a very old laptop, hopefully the newer ones have fixed this problem.
Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
201–210 of 554 posts
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#202This surprises you how? It's just software controlling hardware. Heck, they can flash that led to music if they wanted.
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#203I can see why some people might be concerned about the camera, but I'm far more concerned by the microphone. There's far more sensitive and actionable information that can be gathered from me that way! I'm glad that macOS started putting a light in the menubar when the microphone is in use, but I'd prefer to have unhackable hardware for that instead.
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 can also be used as a photometer. (You can verify this with just a multimeter, an LED, and a light source.) But I doubt there's any practical attack using a monitor as a photosensor.
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#204I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what. Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.
For what it's worth, you could just power on the camera, take a pic, then turn it back off instead. Provided you can do this fast enough, an indicator LED is rendered worthless. So you'd need to make the indicator LED staggered, to stay lit for a minimum amount of time. There's also the scenario where the LED or the connections to it simply fail. If the circuit doesn't account for that, then boom, now your camera can…
LEDs are diodes. So you can run power _through_ them. Power Supply -> LED -> Camera.
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#205Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for your reply — yourself as the Source can only make me feel flattered then for you responding to me. > Macbooks manufactured since 2014 turn on the LED whenever any power is supplied to the camera sensor, and force the LED to remain on for at least 3 seconds. That convinced me originally I think, good old days! I'd almost forgotten about it. The way you phrased it, it sounded like 50% OS concern to me. But i…
I was not very popular with the camera firmware folks for a while. They had to re-architect a bunch of things as they used to occasionally power on the camera logic without powering the sensor array to get information out of the built-in OTP. Because the LED now came on whenever the camera was powered they had to defer all that logic.
What does OTP stand for in this case? The camera PROM??
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#207I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what. Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.
> I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what.
This definitely happened too on Mac in the past, then they went in damage control mode. Not only had Apple access to turn off the LED while the camera was filming, but there was also a "tiny" company no-one had ever heard off that happened to have the keys allowing to trigger the LED off too. Well "tiny company" / NSA cough cough maybe.
After that they started saying, as someone commented, that it requires a firmware update to turn the LED off.
My laptop has a sticker on its camera since forever and if I'm not mistaken there's a famous picture of the Zuck where he does the same.
I've got bridges to sell to those who believe that the LED has to be on for the camera to be recording.
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#208[dead]
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#209I'm surprised how much these X230s are still being used. People who love real keyboards love them.
Personally I didn't think Lenovo's later keyboards were too bad. The one on my T490s was wonderful. However since my work moved to the T14s series, the keyboards have become terrible. The key movement range is too low now, and the feel is crap. It's too bad because Lenovo was the last holdout which still had decent keyboards. The T14s is also bad in other ways, the body got thinner but the screen got a lot thicker and heavier so it's actually worse to carry than the T490s.
Anyway, ontopic: I'm not surprised these cam controller firmwares can be hacked. It's very specific to the controller though.
However, most people I know that care about privacy close the cam door anyway, or put a sticker over it. I use the SpyFy. https://spy-fy.com/collections/webcam-covers . Good luck hacking that.
What worries me a lot more is the microphone. It doesn't have a light, and it's really hard to block. A simple sticker won't do much. These things are super sensitive. I can literally hear myself talking in the other room with the right boost settings.
Re: Malware can turn off webcam LED and record video, demonstrated on ThinkPad X230
#210Of course it can. Cameras and microphones and write enable must have physical switches, not software ones. When will people learn? Never. Me, I unplug the camera and mike when not in use.
> Cameras and microphones and write enable must have physical switches, not software ones. When will people learn? Your preferences are not everybody's. Personally, I'd be totally fine with a camera and microphone LED that is guaranteed to activate whenever there is power/signal flowing from either. > Me, I unplug the camera and mike when not in use. That's a bit hard to do on a laptop that has both built in.
> That's a bit hard to do on a laptop that has both built in.
The Framework laptops have two tiny switches near the camera that physically turn off the mic and camera, and it presumably wouldn't be difficult for other manufacturers to follow suit if enough people cared.