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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."
It's pretty simple: if you have a device with a camera, just cover the camera with a little black tape and tada, no more spying
Since built in mics have been around much longer than built in webcams, no doubt they were hacked a long time ago. They have no way of alerting the users if they are active or not. Im sure many laptops, tablets, phones, game systems, cars electronics (like onstar & bluetooth) and even smart tv's have government spyware to record/monitor conversations and looking for keywords. Besides attaching a psychical switch yourself to a mic, not much you can do, a piece of tape wont help much.
Surely firmware can not be updated/modified without user knowledge, am I wrong?
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A lens cover would not be compatible with the Apple Aesthetic (TM)
I have an external iSight from way back, it actually does have a close-able lens
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I put a backwards mirror over mine so they thought I was spying on them.
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."
There are a lot things you can do with "small tweaks to firmware".
The big companies do as they are told. They are either owned by extremely evil sociopaths (like Bill Gates), who believe that they are fundamentally more 'elite' than powerful politicians, bankers, generals, religious leaders, etc, or they are owned by people who know the cost of doing business at such a level means 'playing ball' with those that hold real power and influence.
In an age when Bill Gates spent TENS OF BILLIONS buying the state-of-the-art depth sensor companies that eventually gave Microsoft the ability to design and build the military grade 'time-of-flight' sensor used in the Kinect 2, all at the behest of NSA full surveillance ambitions, fiddling the software and hardware so the LED that accompanies the CCD camera is controlled in a completely independent way seems like comparing the achievement of an air-craft carrier with a pea-shooter.
However, it is all a never ending program of attacks against us, the general population. You are a serious sex criminal if you put a 'hidden' camera in the room used by your 'au pair', but when the government itself specifically distributes laptops at a high-school, so spyware can video your children in their own bedrooms, NO CRIME has been committed. They push to see how far they can go, and mainstream media outlets like Slashdot encourage you to offer no resistance, no matter how horrible their abuses become.
Normally, society works by EQUILIBRIUM. They push. We push. At some point, both forces are equal. Since the time of Tony Blair, all this has changed. Now so-called civilised nations in the West are supposed to INCREASE the amount they push each and every year, and each and every year we are supposed to walk backwards another mile. Notice the Blairite propaganda for the need for ever more laws, and the need for ever greater punishments for existing laws.
Tony Blair (the 'Putin of the UK, but far more powerful and influential than Putin) travels the world, calling for more state surveillance, more censorship, more laws, more severe punishments, far more organised religion in the lives of ordinary people, and far more military actions. Blair is 'god' for Gates, Obama, and other happy members of the actual far-Right, and the pseudo-liberal far-right.
To Team Blair, we are literal CATTLE, to be controlled, manipulated and used in whatever ways best suit the needs of those that call themselves the 'elite'. Does a farmer hesitate to practice full surveillance methods over his livestock when useful? Of course not.
The combined influence of the British and Americans over the rest of the planet is terrifying. If the British and Americans put on a united front, and say to the world "spy on your sheeple as far as your funds and technology allows, and gain and lasting better control over them in this way", not one nation will stand up and say "no, this is fundamentally evil". If, in the 19th century, Britain and the US had stood together in favour of slavery, Human slavery would be more widespread today than at any previous moment in Human History.
Blair knows how far the legacy of Britain's impact on recent Human events across these last centuries goes. He knows that as I type, all across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and East Europe, despotic regimes are saying "we can get away with this, because they do the same things today in the UK and USA".
Social engineering is now happening on a scale unthinkable even a decade back. Your children are subject to waves of abusive propaganda that would have made Winston Smith think he lived in a paradise of freedom by comparison. You are now told that it is fundamentally WRONG to allow people with non-state-approved opinions to be heard in public forums. The current front page of Digg is BOASTING how science forums on Reddit only allow Tony Blair approved opinions on matters of scientific 'fact'. And yet science, by definition, is the one area where the truth needs no sociological protection, so long as individual scientific voices are not suppressed. The scientific method requires debat
I put a backwards mirror over mine so they thought I was spying on them.
I make sure I'm naked any time I'm within range of the camera -- anyone that makes the mistake of spying on me will not do it again.
I put a backwards mirror over mine so they thought I was spying on them.
I make sure I'm naked any time I'm within range of the camera -- anyone that makes the mistake of spying on me will not do it again.
Don't be so hard on yourself. You have a lovely body.
Click here to view videos of cute kittens!!!!!!
OMG, where? You forgot your link!
That's OK. You know that filling you had replaced last year?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Why not just modify the code to return goatsx instead of blocking the ability to turn on the camera?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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
Many IR receivers and transmitters, such as on remote controls, are covered by opaque black plastic. That black plastic is opaque to visible light, but transparent in infrared. CMOS cameras are very good at seeing in infrared. Therefore, a factory installed cover could APPEAR opaque but actually be transparent for spying purposes.
When I was a licensed private investigator I may have taken advantage of that fact.
https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set