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How a MacBook Camera Can Spy Without Lighting Up
New submitter ttyler writes "It turns out a MacBook's built-in camera can be activated without turning on the green LED. An earlier report suggested the FBI could activate a device's camera without having the light turn on, and there was a case in the news where a woman had nude pictures taken of her without her knowledge. The new research out of Johns Hopkins University confirms both situations are possible. All it takes are a few tweaks to the camera's firmware."
Spoke to an Apple tech just now. It used to be, according to them. They say it isn't anymore.
I worked for Apple, their education department had an uproar when one school district was found to spying on the students via the iSight, the light never went on.
The school admitted they set it up that way.
They were spying on them at home, I wonder how many little kids got undressed in front of their iSights while someone watched.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You're entirely right--you shouldn't trust hearsay. But additionally, if you look back through my post history, you'll find that I'm not in the habit of making unsubstantiated claims. The truth of the matter is that the guy (a repair tech, with long-time electronics experience, whom I trust to work on my own machines) had to go home. It's that time of the evening. But you're right, don't trust hearsay. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait on the schematics/pictures, whereas, you could probably pop open the machine yourself and take a look see if you're competent enough to understand them in the first place. I suggest you do this if you're skeptical. Heck, you might do us a favor and post them.
Apple did actually try to fix this problem by requiring firmware updates to be encrypted. They fucked it up though and leaked the keys via the firmware update apps, so anyone could write their own battery pack malware that literally causes your laptop to catch fire.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is essentially what apple did, according to the report. They connected the LED to the standby signal, which normally has to be disabled to read data from the camera chip. So far, so good.
But the camera chip also has a configuration register - and one of the register options are to disable listening to the standby signal, and go ahead without caring about this signal. So it looks like the designers overlooked that option, or didn't think about it as a serious scenario.
So my impression is that apple has gone further than I've imagined to make a good design, but sadly not a bugfree design. Remember that all designs, hardware or software, may have bugs.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit