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Comment by aahhahahaaa | Hacker News Reader

This has been the case for quite some time (10 years or so). I've torn apart two Macbooks to specifically test this and the LED is enabled when the camera receives power. It's impossible to disable with software.

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.

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I think newer ones even route it through the T1 chip. Need to look again.

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..

The T chip in modern MacBooks is the T2, and it's certainly used for the mic cutoff. I'm unaware of public disclosures around it's use for the camera.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-microphone...

On MacBooks the disconnect is done without the T2 being involved.

> You can modify the Macbook of course, which is why the paranoid type will still use tape.

If the attacker has done this, they might as well just hide the camera somewhere else.

Not really - there are lots of times when you will not be present with your laptop (think airport security).

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.

I really don't think airport security has enough time to open an Apple laptop and rewire the camera.

could probably do a hardware swap in 30 mins, people have definitely been detained longer than that

Oh absolutely, but if I were targeting Zuckerberg this would now be a camera he carries with him and almost always has an available network connection (If I were a billionaire I'd be switching devices near constantly to stave off attacks). You could be carrying around the bug for at least a year if not more.

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.

> It's impossible to disable with software.

> iSeeYou ( 2008 )

Which is it?

> This has been the case for quite some time (10 years or so).

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