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Yes. Technically everything is hackable.
Can you cover the lens with sandpaper and rub it for a few minutes? Permanent problems require permanent solutions
This is the energy I’m looking for. Impractical but powerful.
Most people would like to use the webcam occasionally though.
Have there ever been cases where this actually happened?
Spying trough the webcam?
Hell yeah. There’s even sellers on hacker forums that sell access to the computers of hot girls. It’s sick but it happens.
Most big time hackers don’t do this though. They’ll have so many computers under their control they don’t waste time on singular targets.
Can you provide any sources?
One of the benefits of using a desktop PC instead of a laptop xd
(Tbh if I had a laptop I would surely cover it up. Not going to trust software with this…)
EFF gives out tiny stickers at conventions for that purpose. I’ve been staring at an EFF sticker for years.
I have a cheap garbage windows work laptop without a cover. So I just put a clothesline clip on it at all times.
Absolutely, unless you’re lucky enough to have a laptop with a Physical killswitch on your Webcam + Mic module, then it’s not needed since flipping the Switch physically kills power to the Camera module’s USB header.
Framework Laptops have this Feature.
My Asus has one and I didn’t know about it and FOR YEARS I thought my webcam was broken- it wasn’t even showing up in the device manager. I bought an external webcam, because I figured it was pooched and I had to use a webcam sometimes, but not often enough to care into looking to get it repaired.
This is a story about me being dumb.
Maybe that’s why many PCs these days don’t have them, and also why they don’t have network kill-switches anymore. People just got confused and thought something was broken.
It would give me peace of mind if the switch also slid a cover over the lens. Is there video of people confirming the function of the switch with a voltmeter?
I wish the framework also had a physical switch for the antenna. At least it’s made easy to entirely remove and replace the antenna manually - then using an external antenna has the kill switch of just unplugging it, though it then takes up a port.
If you want that too you could buy one of these covers. I haven’t seen any videos of it but running
dmesg | grep -i "Camera"seems to confirm that it does cut the connections since the devices disappear.Yeah I haven’t seen as many computers with Network/Wireless killswitches, they used to be much more common in the past, so for network cutoff your best bet would probably be to disable or remove the onboard Wifi and use an external Wifi card in one of the expansion slots. Ideally you could use something like this to still have a USB A port but also have a Wifi dongle inside it as well.
I am mostly new to linux and will study on that command.
Regrettably, the camera and microphone switches leave no room next to the lens for the cover in your first link to slide to. I hope a future generation of the screen bezel considers this or incorporates its own lens cover into the camera switch. And thanks for the link to the USB-A/wifi dongle, I hadn’t yet checked out what the makers are up to where expansion cards are concerned!
Cover all cameras on all devices.
Related, when we were shopping for a smart TV last year, it was so difficult to find one without a microphone… I already don’t like my phone having a microphone, why would I put it into my bloody TV…
What about my cameras?
Zuckerberg has been doing this for over a decade.
https://mashable.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-webcam-cover
The answer is yes, obviously duh, yes.
My framework laptop has a built-in, physical kill switch for both the webcam and mic.
On my desktop pc, I cover the webcam or unplug it entirely until I need it.
Yeah I use a desktop PC, and like once every 2 weeks I plug in my webcam for a work meeting, the rest of the time I bask in the comfort that my PC has no visual/audio sensors 😌
More importantly, run an operating system you can trust.
I have Linux Mint installed on my laptop, I just don’t trust M$ Windows with their AI crap.
that’s prettt much impossible without going to insane lengths
linux is literally right there and it works for 90% of use cases.
lineageos can get annoying, yes.
Is it really insane though?
Even a decade ago, it took longer to download a Linux distro than it did to make a bootable disc, boot to it, and install.
Seriously, the very first time I installed Linux on anything was maybe twenty minutes of actual effort total, with the rest being waiting for things to download or process during install. I can’t call that crazy lengths. Not everyone is as confident in following instructions and willing to take a risk, but it isn’t some kind of hyper specialized skill, and the very fact of a bootable storage means you can verify a given install would work on your hardware.
Now, changing roms on android? I would agree that doing so is absurdly more difficult than it should be, and there’s more pitfalls that can screw things up. But I didn’t get the impression you meant that.
For some, particularly businesses reliant on software that can’t perform on anything but Windows (and occasionally MacOS), sure. For individuals it is much easier. Installed Linux Mint a few months ago and I set up a VM for the stuff I truly needed some form of Windows for (tried dual booting for a bit but found that inconvenient). None of these are insane lengths, unless the cutoff for that is, “anything above minimal effort.”
I think what the person before you meant, is that to be fully sure, you’d need to fully understand the code of every program installed on your machine. Even if the source is open, you need to understand it to know for real.
Even if the source is open, you need to understand it to know for real.
Even more importantly, software can be exploited.
And know how to discern obfuscated code
In the past, I had dual booted windows and linux (Ubuntu, I believe), and eventually, windows managed to screw with the bootloader and brick the install. Never tried dual booting again. Windows VM on Linux is a much better solution.
Every single time I boot up my windows install it screws up the boot order and I have to go into UEFI and force it to load GRUB on startup again. Fucking malware.
and what access controls does limux provide forcamera access? because I haven’t seen any such fearure yet. I’m all for linux but it does not help with webcam issues.
to solve this issue you do need to go insane lengths. like apparmor/selinux or whatnot.
Linux?
My Thinkpad has a built-in camera cover. I keep it closed unless I’m specifically using it.
Thinkpads are great that way
This is the way…
TL;DR
Yes
Also disable all microphones etc. of courseFun fact, every speaker is a microphone and vice versa.
While true, an average speaker isn’t sensitive enough to get quality or understandable sound out of, and that’s assuming software can be rewritten to accept input from them.
This isn’t a realistic privacy concern imo, but it is a novel fun fact, and if you have a 3.5mm jack you can play around with it on a PC
Two questions:
- Does my soundcard have an ADC wired (directly) to my speakers?
- If yes: Why?
Usually/some can define their inputs and outputs as needed. My PC has 2 3.5 mm hand at the back and 2 at the front, they can be configured in any way I want essentially.
if they have an amplifier that does not work anymore, does it?
but otherwise that’s right, and in laptop speakers this is probably not a barrier
Oh yeah. Use electrical tape.
If you’re running Linux, does this still apply!?
Yes
Not as much(probably on an order of magnitude less than with windows OSs), but depending on your distro package manager,specfic packages installed and update schedule etc supply chain attacks and other methods of malware injection are still possible,
it doesn’t harm to have your camera covered when not in active use(you can use something like bluetack to cover it if you don’t have an in-built slide cover) so why not imo
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3560646/malicious-open-source-software-packages-have-exploded-in-2024.html <- this could be of some intetest
you can use something like bluetack to cover it if you don’t have an in-built slide cover
FYI they sell dedicated covers for the Webcam which stick around the camera and can slide to cover it and slide to uncover it. If you don’t have a Killswitch on your Camera they’re a good thing to have
as long as you don’t use evil apps
All good then.
