Once a concern that was the province of the paranoid, years worth of
reports and revelations have made it readily apparent that people really
can spy on you through your webcam. Here’s why you should disable or
cover yours.
TL;DR version: Script-kiddie hackers and teenagers
can, and do, use easily accessible tools and phishing techniques to
hijack webcams of unsuspecting people, often who they know, and watch
them through their camera. They can store images and videos of people in
compromising situations in their bedrooms, and many of these images and
videos are uploaded to shady websites.
If you have kids, you should strongly consider reading the entirety
of this article and implementing something to stop their webcams from
being on all the time (or ever).
Is Webcam Spying Really a Threat?
Ten years ago the idea that people—be they government agents,
hackers, or just law-breaking voyeurs—could actively spy on you through
your computer’s webcam would be the considered the ramblings of a
paranoid conspiracy theorist. A slew of news stories over the
intervening years, however, have revealed that what was once considered
paranoia is now an uncomfortable reality.
In 2009, a student sued his school when he discovered
his school-provided laptop was secretly photographing him
(the ensuing legal investigation revealed that the school had collected
56,000 photographs of students without their knowledge or consent). In
2013, researchers demonstrated that they could activate the webcam on
MacBooks
without the indicator light turning on, something previously considered impossible. A former FBI agent confirmed that not only was this possible
but that they’d been doing it for years.
In 2013, courtesy of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we learned that the NSA had successful programs they used to
gain backdoor access to the cameras on iPhones and Blackberries. In 2014, again courtesy of the Snowden leaks, we learned that
the NSA has a host of tools at its disposal to remotely monitor users like “Gumfish”:
a malware tool that allows for remote video monitoring via your webcam.
In early 2015, a group known as BlackShades was broken up after it was
discovered that the software they sold for $40 a pop
had been used to give millions of purchasers remote access (including webcam access) to victims computers; that’s hardly a new trick though as old programs like Back Orifice were used in the same fashion back in the 1990s.
It’s Not Just the NSA
We want to emphasize the whole “hardly a new trick” bit and the ease
with which even marginally skilled malicious users can gain access to
your computer. This article over at Ars Technica,
Meet The Men Who Spy On Women Through Their Webcams,
is an unsettling account. The majority of people doing the spying
aren’t government agents, but low-tier hackers that use simple tools to
catalog and monitor all the devices a computer may have access to.
So before you shrug your shoulders and say, “Well the NSA doesn’t
care about my boring life, so it doesn’t matter,” understand that while
we might all find allegations of government spying the most troubling on
a global and intellectual level, the majority of actual webcam spying
is carried out by creepy Peeping Toms.
So the short of it is: yes, webcam spying is a real threat. When
everyone from the spooks at the NSA to the kid next door has access to
tools that can turn a webcam against its owner then the threat is
legitimate.
What Should I Do?
You should, no questions asked, disable or obscure your computer’s
webcam. There is no good reason, especially in light of the numerous
documented cases of webcam spying, to leave an insecure recording device
permanently accessible on your computer. It’s so easy to do that
there’s no reason not to. Here’s what you should consider.
Make Sure You’re Using Antivirus
While antivirus isn’t going to detect all of these things, and won’t
detect many of the latest ones that are out there, it will at least help
in dealing with the possibility of infection through a link or running
the wrong executable.
Here are the programs we recommend.
The problem is that if the threat is actually the college kid that
offers to help people with their IT problems, they can easily whitelist a
trojan so an antivirus won’t detect it. Or malware could do the same
thing.
You can’t really trust that little icon that says you are secure. But it’s at least a help.
Unplug It
For desktop users with external webcams, the easiest solution is to
simply unplug the USB webcam. No amount of hacking is going to magically
plug an unplugged device back in.
This is the solution we use around the How-To Geek offices; we leave
the webcams in their usual position atop their respective workstation
monitors and then when we need to use them we plug the USB cable into an
easily accessible front or top USB port on the said workstation.
It’s the most foolproof way to approach the problem if you have an
external webcam, and works regardless of the hardware or operating
system.
Disable It in the BIOS
If you have a laptop with an integrated webcam (or a rare all-in-one
desktop model that also sports an integrated webcam), you have a few
options. If your BIOS supports it, you can disable it at the BIOS level,
which is ideal.
Reboot your computer and enter into the BIOS (follow the on-screen
instructions to enter “SETUP”, typically by pressing the F2 key, the DEL
key, or a function key combination of some sort). Look through the BIOS
options for an entry labeled something like “webcam,” “integrated
camera,” or “CMOS camera.” These entries will typically have a simple
toggle, like enable/disable or lock/unlock. Disable or lock the hardware
to turn off your webcam.
Unfortunately, the BIOS solution is relatively rare and typically
found on computers from vendors with heavy institutional sales. Business
Dell and Lenovo laptops, for example, commonly ship with this feature
in the BIOS because their corporate buyers want the ability to disable
the webcam. With other vendors (and even within computer lines from the
aforementioned vendors) it’s hit or miss.
Be forewarned that disabling the webcam typically disables the
microphone too, as in most laptops the camera and microphone module are
on the same small expansion board. This is obviously a benefit (from a
privacy standpoint) but you should be aware of it so you’re not left
wondering why your mic is dead.
Disable It in the OS
This solution isn’t quite as secure or foolproof, but it’s a welcome
next step. You can cripple your webcam by disabling it and removing
driver support for it.
The technique for doing so varies from operating system to operating
system, but the general premise is the same. In Windows, you just need
to enter the Device Manager (click Start and search for “device manager”
to find it). There, you can locate your webcam under the “Imaging
Devices” category, right-click it, and choose “Disable” or “Uninstall”.
Obviously this isn’t a perfect solution. If someone has remote
administrative access to your machine they can always, with a greater or
lesser degree of hassle, install the missing drivers and enable the
device again.
Barring that kind of focus and determination, however, it’s a simple
and easy way to disable your webcam. It is, however, rather inconvenient
if you actually use your integrated webcam with any regularity. This
brings us to the next solution: obscuring the lens with a cover.
Cover It Up
A compromise between the hassle of disabling the the webcam in the
BIOS or operating system and leaving it wide open all the time is
applying a simple physical cover to your webcam lens. As elementary and
simplistic as it seems, it’s actually a really effective technique. You
get instant visual confirmation that the lens is disabled (you can see
the cover every time you look at your laptop), it’s easy to remove, and
we even tried out some dirt cheap DIY options that keep the cover-up
option economical.
Presented below, for reference, is the laptop we’re using without any
of the solutions (commercial or DIY) applied. The indicator light is on
the left, the webcam lens is center, and the microphone is on the
right.
Before you run off to grab a roll of duct tape, let’s run through some of the more convenient commercial options.
Eyebloc Cover (~$6)
The
Eyebloc is the
best selling and the most reviewed webcam cover on Amazon. The design
is really simple: it’s a C-shaped plastic clamp that you slip onto your
laptop (it can also be applied to tablets and smartphones in a similar
fashion).
No doubt about it, it was easy to apply, easy to remove, and as
advertised it had no adhesive to speak of (so there was no risk of
residue). It also completely blocked the webcam lens on all devices we
tested it on. That said, this thing is really,
really, ugly and
obvious. In terms of style we’d rank the Eyebloc right up there with
the massive fit-over-sunglasses you’d see around a retirement community.
This is also the only device we tested that won’t work very well for
smart TVs, game consoles, or any other larger device that has a
webcam-like device built in. If you’re not attaching it to a slender
object like a laptop lid or tablet, it won’t work.
C-Slide (~$5)
The
C-Slide
is a tiny (and we do mean tiny) plastic slider that you adhere onto
your laptop or tablet. The entire device is the size of a very small
mailing label (1.4″ x 0.5″ and a scant 1mm or so thick). It’s so tiny,
in fact, that it was delivered stuck to a piece of cardstock in a common
#10 business envelope and the outside of the envelope had “Your webcam
cover order is inside!” in large highlighted print to, presumably,
ensure we didn’t scrap it as junk mail.
Unlike the other solutions in this roundup the C-Slide is intended
for permanent application to the device. You enable and disable the
webcam by sliding the tiny little panel of plastic back and forth to
open and close the webcam much like some larger external webcams have a
physical slider that covers the lens when not in use.
Despite our misgivings about how tiny the C-Slide is, it worked quite
well. It’s so slim that you can easily close the laptop without any
noticeable gap between the lid and body. There were only two issues we
found with the C-Slide.
First, if you have a laptop that has a curved bezel, it does not
adhere very well and will likely fall off immediately (or shortly after
application). Second, you’ll want to place it very carefully so that it
doesn’t accidentally stick over the microphone hole on your laptop or
cover the indicator light. Second, before you peel the double-sided tape
off the back and slap it on, take a minute to experiment with
placement. Our initial placement was less than ideal, as it blocked the
indicator light and resulted in a blocked microphone when the slider was
open. By offsetting the opening in the slider slightly from the webcam
lens we were able to position the device such that the microphone wasn’t
obscured or taped over and the only time the indicator light was
blocked was when we had the slider open to use the webcam.
Those minor issues aside, the C-Slide will work on any camera
embedded in a flat surface so long as the camera lens is smaller than
the roughly square centimeter opening of the slider (approximately the
size of the nail on your pinky finger). Overall this was our favorite
solution. It’s easy to apply and it’s easy to use: no picking at a
little sticky disk and no misplaced parts.
Creative Cam Covers (~$10 for 6)
The
Creative Cam Covers
feel and look very similar to cut vinyl decal clings like those you
would order from a sign shop or purchase to peel out and stick on your
car window. The pack comes with an alcohol wipe and six black circular
clings roughly the size of a dime. They have no adhesive, but instead
use static electricity to cling to smooth surfaces.
This is both a benefit (no sticky residue and they’re easy to remove)
and a flaw (they work great on smooth surfaces but not so great on
textured ones). As such, they work super well on laptops with glossy
piano black bezels and tablets that have smooth glass bezels, but if
your laptop is brushed aluminum (like a MacBook) or just has a rough
texture on the bezel, you may find they readily fall off.
In light of that, we can only recommend the product for those
situations: super smooth and flat laptop bezels or glass surfaces like
those found on tablets. None of our laptops have a gloss case and the
Cam Covers would not stick (even for a fraction of a second) to the
bezel of the laptop we used for demonstration purposes in this article.
They did, however, stick incredibly well to the perfectly smooth glass
surface of our iPad mini, as seen in the photo above. If you’re looking
for a non-adhesive solution for a tablet or laptop with a gloss bezel
this is a great solution.
DIY Electrical Tape Covers (< $1)
While field testing all these solutions, it occurred to us that if
you weren’t afraid of a tiny bit of adhesive then the cheapest solution
would be to simply punch a hole in a piece of electrical tape with a
hole punch and you’d have a perfectly round little dot you could place
right over the lens of your integrated webcam.
A quick trip to the old supply closet for some tape, a hole punch,
and FedEx label (to steal a bit of the non-stick paper backing) and we
had the fixings for hundreds of webcam covers.
The only downside to this technique is that, yes, you’ll potentially
have a little adhesive to deal with when removing the dot (although this
is mostly a temperature-related issue, as electrical tape doesn’t have
much residue when used in cooler temperatures). It would also be easy to
lose or mangle the little dot of tape if you were using it while
traveling about, but given how cheap they are to make you could easily
stash a few in your laptop bag.
Armed with the tips we’ve shared on disabling or covering your webcam
you can easily avoid the unfortunate reality of webcam snooping and
reduce or outright eliminate webcam-based privacy breaches.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/210921/how-to-disable-your-webcam-and-why-you-should/
