I don't see Apple claiming they've done that but a correct design would make the indicator light work that way and be related to software at all. Meaning you could only disable the indicator light by physically modifying the device.
You may be able to verify a design like this once with a teardown, but it's impractical to verify your particular device, and next to impossible to re-verify this every time you leave your laptop unattended.
As someone who posts to Hacker News you are by almost any definition a potential information source or APT vector.
I must add, I peeked over his shoulder a few times, and my comment that it looks as good inside as it does out was answered with “yes, it’s like being asked to restore a work of art”.
For the former a piece of tape is enough.
He didn't say it was.
What he said was that his threat model doesn't include state agencies. Many people use their laptops in bed and they probably don't want random people using their laptop webcam to take random nudes.
And, while I hear the NSA being quoted a lot, let's be fair, how many of us have the opsec to stand up to a genuine NSA attack?
A reasonable goal in thwarting the NSA should be to stop some random bureaucrat from typing on a few keys and getting access to your stuff without a signature. As long as some bureaucrat has to put their signature on a piece of paper and get budget to get my stuff, I'm safe against random trawling.
Besides, if the NSA really wants you, they'll just fabricate the evidence. It's way cheaper.
They didn’t need to use the word to imply it. I did however assume they’re weren’t so self-centeredly solipsistic as to think that their personal choices were the universal general case, or advisable for a typical participant on this forum. But then:
> Besides, if the NSA really wants you, they'll just fabricate the evidence. It's way cheaper.
Again, no. That’s another of those “surely this doesn’t happen” comments, and once again, it is flat wrong. Even setting aside that discrediting/compromising someone is likely to be different agency; just as with bugging them, there are still plenty more reasons besides eavesdropping or coercion, such as industrial espionage, or sabotage, and the main point is that this isn’t theoretical. It happens. Deal with it, don’t deal, up to you, but never assume you can’t be a target.
This is why I only take a disposable laptop and phone across US or Chinese borders. Both have intelligence services with the resources, ability, and inclination toward systematically documenting anyone even remotely interesting.
> As long as some bureaucrat has to put their signature on a piece of paper and get budget to get my stuff, I'm safe against random trawling
If this level of willingness to disregard the entire history of bureaucracy and covert action helps you feel safe, and if you have no direct or indirect ties to any other human being, body of data, or corporate entity that could ever be at any kind of risk, then why not I guess.
Lenovo didn't allow you to configure a T480 with both the high-resolution display and the plastic slider, it was either-or. The high-resolution display was their premium option that omitted the slider and added two more IR cameras for Windows Hello support.
So in addition to not getting the slider, I also had to disable the IR cameras.
I'm half tempted to buy the version of the display bezel with the slider and see if it'll fit as a replacement.
[1] Yes, yes, assuming you can block all frequencies the camera is capable of detecting.
EDIT: a commenter below said
"Macs newer than 4 or so years also have a feature that forces the LED to stay lit for at least 3 seconds after it has been turned on to prevent the single-frame-grab attack."
I really think an LED is barking up the wrong tree. A built-in hardware cover would have the same effect as the LED, and no one would have to trust it, since the camera would just be recording the back of the cover if it was hacked in stealth mode.
Boy, wait until you find about what's possible manipulating PCB or processor designs (the Bloomberg fiction piece "The big Hack" illustrates what would be possible with just PCB manipulation). Or firmware or anything else proprietary running with elevated rights (normal ones are already enough to cause a lot of damage on most systems).
All you can do is reduce attack surface.
Well, I don't mean to fuel your paranoia, but there are materials opaque to the human eye but not necessarily fully opaque to a CMOS sensor, especially one without infrared/UV filters.
It would be quite possible, trivial even, to design a web camera with a nice built-in black camera cover -- which is transparent to the camera.
I do physically disconnect or cover cameras. My desktop computer has no microphone unless I plug one in. Laptop and phone though? I definitely remember in the aughts that the police could remotely turn your phone into a bug without any user indication at all. To the best of my knowledge the only way to actually be sure you aren't being recorded with your own equipment is to remove power... of course now the batteries are soldered on, totally a coincidence I'm sure.
If your laptop (or iPad, in the case of the latest gen) is an Apple T2 equipped device, this is somewhat relevant (“somewhat” as it’s not directly related to my original reply)
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secbbd20b00b/...
A better solution would be to have the microphone be physically removable, but even then it could have an internal power source and storage...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKY3hvYKPpA
Too bad it mainly shows your nostrils :(
Can you guarantee the manufacturer followed the design specification for every batch?
Threat models matter.
You can modify the Macbook of course, which is why the paranoid type will still use tape.
Some attacks I've seen will take a photo with the camera as fast as possible so you might not notice, but the light will always turn on.
There was an exploit, over 10 years ago like you said, that allow to disable it. But that was corrected.
Edit
- iıSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam Indicator LED - This was 2008 - https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...
Looking for t1 links.
Edit 2
Can't find anything confirming the t1 right now..
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-microphone...
> iSeeYou ( 2008 )
Which is it?
If the attacker has done this, they might as well just hide the camera somewhere else.
It's orders of magnitude easier to get access to a mobile device than to setup a camera in every possible location a target might move to. But they'll helpfully carry the device with them.
Your average blackmailer would be better off with the separate camera route (and likely wouldn't be sophisticated enough otherwise) but a state-sponsored attack could probably pull it off.
The point is whether you will be able to prevent the camera from taking a video/picture you don't want it to.
Unless you can physically disconnect or block the camera, there's not guarantee that a piece of software can't record.
The best Apple can offer here is that you will know the recording was done (assuming you are looking at your computer, and not looking away or in another room) .
A way to overvoltage/current and burn out the LED. Probability low, but nonzero.
More plausible situation: There are times when the camera is pointed at me, but my head is not pointed at the camera. Perhaps I left the laptop on in the corner of a room while it's playing music, or a myriad of other things.
A cover is a simple, foolproof solution to the camera issue.
It’s a very different threat than most people have.
Most people on hacker news? Unclear.
I think a really large portion of users here would be extremely good attack targets. Developers with privileged access to source code and operations staff with privileged access to systems make up a significant portion of the users here.
Besides: Most people don't accidentally want to show up on a video conference while undressed when they accidentally hit the wrong button in some confusing skeumorphic app specific interface: The LED only warns you after its too late.
And in fact one of the devs was poached by a shady bunch of foreign looking suits who would have fit right in with big brother.
In all fairness you have a split second between the light coming on and the video stream initializing to err hide your shame. What are you doing in front of your computer with no pants on? Naked yoga?
Generally speaking - as developers type away on their packet handling or authentication code, they all too naively believe they won't be a target of a new friend or bribe.
The light indicator in modern webcams is a "physical" indicator. Sure, it won't stop it from being hacked, but it will light up whenever it is active. That part can't be hacked, since it's in the hardware.
Given the business he is in, the reason is blatant hypocrisy?
At the same time, he's going to be an exclusive target for myriad actors big and small, up to and including entire nations, so extra paranoia is probably warranted.
> There's a reason Zukerberg's laptop has its mic and camera tapped up
This is an incredibly weakly phrased argument; there's a reason people are flat-earthers as well. The existence of a reason does not automatically make that reason a good one.
I actually take his webcam tape to mean that his security group (which includes people who have serious hardware chops) doesn't think that the investment in a better option is worth it.
Lastly, about that 0day argument. Many camera LEDs are implemented in hardware, which means instead of hardware prevention they have hardware detection. There are reasons for both, and neither is unambiguously better.
The hacking consequences I care about are having my bank accounts drained, not having my picture taken.
Virtue signaling mostly.
It’s not difficult to open a laptop and remove those components all together. Especially for someone like Zuckerberg.
I think the simplest explanation is whoever was staging the scenery around him didn't think anybody would notice the taped laptop. If they did realize that, they probably would have untaped. It wasn't meant to be a detail you notice or centerpiece of conversation. That's my guess.
Yeah, people who don't understand how hardware works.
"Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera"
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/08/473548674...