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Comment by kjkjadksj | Hacker News Reader

You trust the green dot with your heart simply because they wired it in series with the camera. Can’t be bypassed unless you opened the device and bypassed the green light. This is why people with webcam covers on macbooks are fools: they fear and yet they do not care to understand what it is they fear to see if it is actually worth fearing.

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The problem is that apparently, often enough that is just not the case.

On laptops, the LED is not powered with the camera, but controlled by it. And on smartphones, if it's a green dot on the display it can obviously be bypassed in different ways given the right vulnerabilities.

Also, aside from that, your condescending attitude is frustrating.

> This is why people with webcam covers on macbooks are fools

So you think it's fine if someone accidentally activates the camera, as long as they know about it?

All it takes is an accidental click on "Video" during a teams call in the bathroom, and you will quickly discover the utility of a cover.

So anyways, here's a somewhat memorable incident of people doing the thing you claim is impossible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISeeYou

ISeeYou went well beyond turning off the light, it also came with arbitrary code execution: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity14/technical...

The "hack" baddies do is to only activate it for 30ms or so, so there's a chance you'll miss the green light.

The API calls to turn on the camera, wait for + grab the first frame, and terminate it, are 1) non timing deterministic and 2) always take more than 30ms so that’s a pretty bad “hack”

An indicator light cannot prevent malicious webcam activation, it can only tell you that you have been owned in retrospect.

I thought the oval area on the iPhone is a screen. Not really a light per se

This is only true on Macs

Even zuck doesn’t understand this. There are shots of him out there with macbooks that have that circuit setup with a piece of tape still. Even if it was a risk, what about the mic there zuck? Stuffed with beeswax already?

Lol it's like calling people taking vaccine is a fool. The indicator light only tell you that you have been compromised, they do not prevent that malware from running at all. And when the light is turned on, the hacker will already have hundreds pictured of you(60 fps is 60 frames per second after all)

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