A woman was shocked when she received two nude photos of herself via e-mail. The photos were taken several months ago - unbeknownst to her - by her laptop's built-in camera.
Fortunately, the FBI was able to spot a suspect: her classmate, Jared Abrahams. The FBI reportedly discovered the software on the Abrahams computer that allowed it to spy remotely, but also many other women.
Abrahams confessed to his extortion in October. The case of this woman left a serious security issue pending.
Most laptops with built-in cameras also have an important security feature - a light that is supposed to turn on every time the camera is in use. The woman, however, stated that she never said that the light should be on on her laptop. Therefore, she had no idea that anyone was watching her.
This would not normally have happened. Remote control of a camera for a long time is a source of concern for privacy advocates, but there is no way to turn off the indicator light. New data show exactly the opposite.
Marcus Thomas, a former assistant director of the FBI's Technology Division at Quantico, told The Washington Post that the FBI has the ability to covertly turn on the computer camera - without turning on the light that allows owners to record them.
A study presented by Johns Hopkins University gives us the first public confirmation that this can happen. While research has been done on systems on MacBooks and iMacs (models before 2008), researchers say similar techniques could work on more recent computers from different brands. In other words, if a laptop has a built-in camera, it is possible for someone - the government or a malicious 19-year-old - to be able to spy on the owner at any time.
Embedded cameras on Apple computers are designed to prevent this, said Stephen Checkoway, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins.
"Apple tried to make sure the LED would light up when the camera was running." 2008 - was a time when Apple products were created with a "hardware interface" between the camera and the lamp to ensure that the camera could not operate without warning.
But Checkoway and graduate student Matthew Brocker were able to bypass this security feature. "There is more than one chip in your computer," said Charlie Miller, an expert better safetys in Twitter . “There's a chip on her batterys, a chip in the keyboard, a chip in the camera.”
MacBooks are designed to stop its camera from turning on iSight if the light does not come on. But researchers have discovered how to reprogram the camera's chip, known as a microcontroller, to bypass this security feature.
Η work published by Brocker and Checkoway is called “iSeeYou: Disabling the MacBook Webcam LED Indicator, "And describes how to reprogram the iSight camera microcontroller to allow the camera and the light to operate independently.
Our researchers are also provided with a copy of their software proof of concept. In the following video, we show how the camera can be turned on without activating the warning light.
