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There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of t
by matthewfcarlson 7mo ago
There is a ton of fascinating work to make the "software" camera in use indicator just as secure if not more secure than an LED attached to the power lines of the camera. Apple hasn't publicly talked about it much but here are two sources that aren't terrible.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09272 https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09272
https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c37194 https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/on-apple-exclaves https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/on-apple-exclav...
We've seen a few examples on HN lately (Coruna iOS Exploit Kit) of nation state level exploits in the hands of financially motivated organizations. I'm not free of bias here but the industry is quickly headed towards a reckoning in terms of security over the next few years.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo agoMinus an intentionally bad hardware design, I struggle to imagine how a software version of the idea could ever be more secure than a power line hard-wired to an LED.
- chongli 7mo agoYou build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo agoThat is still a blackbox code implementation which could be updated at any time. I trust wires, not programmers.
- s3p 7mo agoI mean, we don't really have any indication that the MacBook camera light is hard wired into anything.
- 3eb7988a1663 7mo agoFor those who are interested, you can disassemble/image the assembly and see there is no funny business. People have done it. If there is something more complex than a power line, something is afoot. I have no way of interrogating some GPU firmware.
- chongli 7mo agoThe firmware could be flashed to the device in factory and then write-protected by burning a fuse in the circuit.
- saagarjha 7mo agoThis is not the case.
- solarkraft 7mo agoI still don’t see how this could be more secure than connecting the LED to the camera’s power lines.
- throw0101d 7mo ago> You build it directly into the GPU firmware and don't give the operating system any access to it. State-level actors have been know to fiddle with firmware, specifically in the past for hard drives: * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135348581530012X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13534... * https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/ https://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/ I could see how cameras and microphones could be enticing targets.
- qingcharles 7mo agoI'm pretty sure the Apple dev who was tasked with securing the older hardware "tally lamps" is on HN somewhere -- I seem to remember him posting about it. (is it you?) I used to know a guy, about 15 years ago, who made his money exclusively through buying up laptops and hacking the tally lamp code (to stop it activating) one-by-one and selling the code directly to 3LAs. It was really good money.
- saagarjha 7mo agoNo, I was not in the industry at the time :)
- saagarjha 7mo agoI am well aware of that work and the result is not more secure than power lines turning the LED on.