19.12.2013 18:35 Uhr, Quelle: Macworld UK

Older Mac webcams can spy without activating warning light, researchers find

Most webcams have a warning light that indicates when they're active, but it's possible for malware to disable this important privacy feature on older Mac computers, according to research from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore.JHU Assistant Research Professor Stephen Checkoway and graduate student Matthew Brocker investigated the hardware design of the first-generation iSight webcam model installed in Apple's iMac and MacBook computers released before 2008 and found that its firmware could easily be modified to disable the indicator LED.At the hardware level, the LED is directly attached to the webcam's image sensor, particularly its STANDBY pin. When the STANDBY signal is active the LED is off and when not active, the LED is on, the JHU researchers said in a recently released paper.In order to disable the LED, the researchers had to find a way to activate STANDBY, but also configure t

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