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For people who believe the marketing: why would a legitimate sysadmin tool include a cryptocurrency miner and a feature to turn off the webcam indicator light?

For people who believe the marketing: why would a legitimate sysadmin tool include a cryptocurrency miner and a feature to turn off the webcam indicator light? This was used to exploit people, plain and simple. While I don't think blanket arresting people who downloaded it is reasonable (someone may have fallen for the marketing and used it for legit reasons), shutting down the C&C servers to disable it from working and aiding in exploitation & blackmail is a net good.

kauffj 7y ago
From a purely consequentialist perspective, it's not clearly a net good if it has a chilling effect on legitimate research, increases economic costs due to regulatory uncertainty, or has other negative second-order effects concomitant with arbitrary and overly subjective legal systems. From a deontological perspective, it's not clear that this is good if one of your values is clearly and consistently enforced law.
scoot 7y ago
> a feature to turn off the webcam indicator light I naively always assumed that a webcam indicator light was hard wired to turn on when the camera was in use. If it isn't, why on earth not?
- xnyan 7y ago
  In addition to more cost, if any part of the led indication circuitry were to fail then you also lost your mic. For some this may be preferred, but I can see some people not happy if the failure of an unrelated part took out their mic.
- __jal 7y ago
  Older Macs had the indicator light hardwired. I don't know if they still do. > If it isn't, why on earth not? The same reason for nearly every other design defect in retail-grade hardware: cost vs. margins.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    I guess it depends on your idea of what an "older" mac is: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/perv-utopia-light-on-macbook-webcams-can-be-bypassed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/perv-...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- baroffoos 7y ago
  >If it isn't, why on earth not? Because its simpler to do it in software and the users won't notice anyway.

kauffj 7y ago

From a purely consequentialist perspective, it's not clearly a net good if it has a chilling effect on legitimate research, increases economic costs due to regulatory uncertainty, or has other negative second-order effects concomitant with arbitrary and overly subjective legal systems. From a deontological perspective, it's not clear that this is good if one of your values is clearly and consistently enforced law.

scoot 7y ago

> a feature to turn off the webcam indicator light I naively always assumed that a webcam indicator light was hard wired to turn on when the camera was in use. If it isn't, why on earth not?

xnyan 7y ago
In addition to more cost, if any part of the led indication circuitry were to fail then you also lost your mic. For some this may be preferred, but I can see some people not happy if the failure of an unrelated part took out their mic.
__jal 7y ago
Older Macs had the indicator light hardwired. I don't know if they still do. > If it isn't, why on earth not? The same reason for nearly every other design defect in retail-grade hardware: cost vs. margins.
- autoexec 7y ago
  I guess it depends on your idea of what an "older" mac is: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/perv-utopia-light-on-macbook-webcams-can-be-bypassed/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/perv-...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
baroffoos 7y ago
>If it isn't, why on earth not? Because its simpler to do it in software and the users won't notice anyway.