12 thoughts on “Hackers activate MacBook webcam without green warning light”
It wasn’t clear from the MacRumors or Washington Post articles what level of access was required to perform the hack. From the original Johns Hopkins paper, it seems that local or remote access to the user’s account is required, but admin level access is not required.
im not chilled. you mic can be hacked too, and theres no recording LED for that, is there?
Time to stick that post-it back on.
So far I haven’t seen anything that says it’s possible in MacBooks built after 2008. Only that “it’s likely”. So it’s a five-year-old chill.
Activity monitor shows when these processes are running. Perhaps a utility that indicated camera or microphone activation might be useful for those who feel the need.
That probably means it’s a race between hackers and Apple.
Hopefully, Apple’s participating in the race.
Problem: If you can hack the kernel to work around the video hardware interlock, you can lie to a utility that monitors camera activation.
It might well be possible to architect around that at the hardware level, though that would be tricky.
(Beyond a hardware switch that cuts power to the camera and mic, that is. That’s easy but makes for ugly UI and a level of fragility that Apple isn’t likely to like.)
An easier fix would be to modify the USB layer to not allow non-elevated users to do things like send reprogramming requests to USB devices – restrict non-root access to predefined APIs, at least for built-in devices – even outside of the App Sandbox.
Awkardly complicated, but I believe it would be feasible.
(Indeed, they wrote a sample kext that did just that, specific to this device.)
My ancient iSight webcam from Apple, with Firewire, has a physical iris on it, so they can’t activate it without me physically opening the iris.
Sad it had to die as a product. I still use it as my Mac Pro’s default mic. Works just fine after all these years.
Gotta get a good one for my new Mac Pro coming after I get my tax return! Who makes a great Star Wars theme webcam to fit with my Darth’s Trashcan?
(Well, in this case, the interlock was defeated with firmware reprogramming and no kernel interference.
But it’s not clear that the host COULD detect that, at least not for an arbitrary modification, or in a way that a reprogram couldn’t just lie about…)
exactly. How about a little door that covers the camera lens except when you are using it? I’ve wanted that for a WHILE now…
It wasn’t clear from the MacRumors or Washington Post articles what level of access was required to perform the hack. From the original Johns Hopkins paper, it seems that local or remote access to the user’s account is required, but admin level access is not required.
im not chilled. you mic can be hacked too, and theres no recording LED for that, is there?
Time to stick that post-it back on.
So far I haven’t seen anything that says it’s possible in MacBooks built after 2008. Only that “it’s likely”. So it’s a five-year-old chill.
Activity monitor shows when these processes are running. Perhaps a utility that indicated camera or microphone activation might be useful for those who feel the need.
That probably means it’s a race between hackers and Apple.
Hopefully, Apple’s participating in the race.
Problem: If you can hack the kernel to work around the video hardware interlock, you can lie to a utility that monitors camera activation.
It might well be possible to architect around that at the hardware level, though that would be tricky.
(Beyond a hardware switch that cuts power to the camera and mic, that is. That’s easy but makes for ugly UI and a level of fragility that Apple isn’t likely to like.)
An easier fix would be to modify the USB layer to not allow non-elevated users to do things like send reprogramming requests to USB devices – restrict non-root access to predefined APIs, at least for built-in devices – even outside of the App Sandbox.
Awkardly complicated, but I believe it would be feasible.
(Indeed, they wrote a sample kext that did just that, specific to this device.)
My ancient iSight webcam from Apple, with Firewire, has a physical iris on it, so they can’t activate it without me physically opening the iris.
Sad it had to die as a product. I still use it as my Mac Pro’s default mic. Works just fine after all these years.
Gotta get a good one for my new Mac Pro coming after I get my tax return! Who makes a great Star Wars theme webcam to fit with my Darth’s Trashcan?
(Well, in this case, the interlock was defeated with firmware reprogramming and no kernel interference.
But it’s not clear that the host COULD detect that, at least not for an arbitrary modification, or in a way that a reprogram couldn’t just lie about…)
exactly. How about a little door that covers the camera lens except when you are using it? I’ve wanted that for a WHILE now…
not gonna happen.