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Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

Prior to the NSA contractor Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, Room-641A had already been exposed by an AT&T employee-turned-whistleblower Mark Klein. The EFF sued the government in 2006 over it.

Tape over laptop cameras isn't just a "parents-of-friends" thing, it's a good idea. Buy a set of stickers and support the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set

Anyone know somebody at Wired?

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> Tape over laptop cameras isn't just a "parents-of-friends" thing, it's a good idea. Buy a set of stickers and support the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set

Support the EFF! But I hate the stickers.

Everyone puts a sticker on their webcam and completely ignores the hot mic. But you get that false sense of security…

I unplugged the microphone on my daughter's iMac years ago. She did not use it, and was ok with that.

I did not break her phone in that way. Her phone is more dangerous.

> I unplugged the microphone on my daughter's iMac years ago.

Please note that a speaker may also act as a microphone if configured so (at software level). This is especially true for speakers/headphones connected via the jack.

It's likely an internal microphone and speaker; the sound card may not support input through that interface. What you're saying can be true for many other modern computers, though.

There was an article (a while ago) showing that at least one major brand of onboard sound cards has undocumented features to switch the audio-out jack port to input. Cheap headphone/earbuds function as a microphone too, so that's a thing. Only if you leave the earbuds plugged in, of course. It can't listen from an empty jack port.

I (personally) think that intelligence/privacy-wise the mic on many devices is a lot more troubling than a camera. Camera is very directional and (again, personally for me) would at most result in embarrassment? While a microphone can record all conversations in a room/appartment, transmit everything with fairly negligible bandwidth, and taping over it won't do much good. You actually need to open the device and disconnect/cut a wire.

OT: @lightedman you're dead. Apparently due to some heated discussion on the term regression. But from a glance I couldn't find anything that stood out enough to warrant a ban. Might want to send an email and have your account unbanned.

Exactly. I've given up on tape on camera. Frankly my mug just isn't that important compared to the key strokes I make.

audio only nudies are usually slightly less exciting.

Most people’s hacked nudes will come from pictures they take themselves, not webcam snaps.

We should start demanding physical shutters for laptop webcams. Does anyone make those yet?

Even better is a hardware kill switch, especially for the mic.

Librem Purism labtop has hadware kill switches.

I managed to unplug the mic in my Thinkpad and my Dell XPS laptop with about 5min of work for each. It's still possible to do at the moment if you don't mind relying on plugging in headphones w/ a mic to use one.

Of course a switch would be nice, similar to the older Thinkpads which had a hardware switch for the network devices on the front, originally for use on airplanes.

> I managed to unplug the mic in my Thinkpad

Any chance you documented the procedure or have links to relevant documentation?

For Thinkpads the documentation you're looking for is the "Hardware Maintenance Manual" (HMM). E.g. here is one for the X260, it clearly describes where the camera/microphone assembly is, how to get to it and where its wire connections go: https://ok2.de/ThinkPad/HMM/x260_hmm_en_sp40j72016.pdf I haven't taken apart one of the more Ultrabook-style ones, so not sure how accessible those are, but the traditional ones are very serviceable.

I wouldn't be surprised if the better Dell models have similar documentation available.

This is easy in almost all laptops: the microphone is attached to the mobo via a 2-wire tiny plug. Disassemble your laptop, look at the other side of the keyboard pane, a bit away from the speakers. Some laptops might also carry mikes in the screen bezel or multiple mikes, so check all cables that go away from the mobo.

But now you have to trust the switch to really deactivate the mic. I'm a recursive paranoiac !

The usual* way to handle this is to have a small LED next to the mic/camera that shows when it's on -- and have it wired up to the device in series, such that it's software-impossible for the device to be powered without the light being on.

*: it's what we did on the One Laptop Per Child laptop, and I'm sure others have too.

Thank you for inventing the netbook and showing the ODMs how to make low cost PC notebooks.

Any idea where to get a CLI-from-boot notebook for teaching kids programming and encouraging a hacker ethic?

Thanks for the kind words! I haven't used it personally, but a programmer in my Twitter feed recommended this one that they've been using with their kids recently. (I don't think there's a heavy emphasis on CLI.)

https://tksstgiftguide.tumblr.com/post/167274832422/our-kids...

At least you only need to verify a switch once, it won't be compromised by software changes.

Assuming the switch does really cut the mic signal and doesn't instead act on a i/o pin which calls a function to disable the mic input. The second solution would be hackable.

That's a very good point. We have it for wifi already, so...

I 3d-printed a crude shutter and super-glued it to the bezel: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oOkPP_5bjhs

I think it would be about as easy to make a cardboard one.

Indeed they do. The security team at my work ordered hundreds of them and hand them out to anyone that asks. They even have the company logo on them.

There's been a Kickstarter called Nope for cams for a few years now, they exceeded funding by a large multiple each time. I got the second version a year ago, they are now on version 3 and added a headphone jack blocker.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bungajungle/nope-sound-...

Not really sure about the headphone jack blocker; I'm not aware of an OS where the sound source can't be trivially switched in software, even when headphones are plugged in.

The likelihood is that if an attacker has the ability to record audio, they also have the ability to bypass this device.

My Asus EEEPC has one.

C-slide dot com, the iPad one (round with a pivot) is my favourite

Indeed, bags of lens stick on lens covers (that allow you to open when you need the camera) is a product idea I thought of ages ago, but too lazy to actually do.

it exists already, got one as swag at a conference from Nvidia (???). strange gift, I like the sentiment though.

Yes, got mine as a swag too (not Nvidia), works perfectly. Can be found by looking for "webcam cover slider" on Amazon or I assume any web store that deals with such things.

> Tape over laptop cameras isn't just a "parents-of-friends" thing

Not sure why you took that statement as deriding the practice because some older people are doing it? I noted it merely as an indication of how far the behavioural change has spread as a result of news stories... Of course it's good security hygiene. Not an ideal solution though, as others have already mentioned, compared to a hardware switch or built-in cover.

Ah, apologies; The way I read it was that your friends don't but their parents do.

That's funny, because I noticed something during a recent ~10k device audit.

Across the mobile IT we manage, the groups who covered or unplugged their webcams, internal or external, most consistently were middle to older age women, with the least common as women in their 30s or younger. Men covered randomly across all ages, but still less than women. And while they'll cover their laptop camera, most who didn't have a folding case did not also cover their tablet or phone cameras.

I don't know if it's comfort or awareness, but the ones who covered acted like it was common sense, and the ones who didn't hadn't considered it or felt like they weren't likely to be a target of interest. A few women said they chose their laptops because of the physical shutter over the camera.

I don't know if trust in electronics is more generational or age related, but it's definitely a gradient.

I definitely agree about tapeing the camera. Zuckerberg does it too

https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11995032/mark-zuckerberg-...

While I don't care one way or another what people choose to do to their own devices and am happy to accept that it's probably a good practice, it does always cause me to chuckle when the "Zuckerburg does it" argument is thrown out.

I think the threat profile faced by "the rest of us" is probably just a little less intense than someone as well known, wealthy, famous and influential as the CEO of Facebook, but perhaps that's just me.

The money for that tape came from selling our privacy.

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