9 ms·

Honestly, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to create a camera chip not susceptible to any software hack. The camera sensor needs electrical current to w

by x0054 13y ago

Honestly, I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to create a camera chip not susceptible to any software hack. The camera sensor needs electrical current to work. Simply place the LED inline or in parallel to the camera and you are done. Any time current is sent to the camera sensor, the LED cant help it but light up. My knowledge of electronics is limited, but I know for a fact that this can be achieved without the use of any reprogrammable microchips, with the use of a simple electrical circuit.

RBerenguel 13y ago
IIRC, in my old Macbook (early 2008) the led is actually inlined. Some machines had a weird hardware bug that shorted this area and sometimes the led would go on... and the camera would be useless until next reboot (mine was one of these, didn't realise until ~after 6 months of owning it
DanBC 13y ago
Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. Not like all the other LEDs that are on all the time and are mostly pointless. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/webcam-spy-settleme... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386599,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386599,00.asp > When the school district investigated the case, it found other incidents of webcam spying, and notified the students involved, including Levin. According to the lawsuit, filed in Eastern Pennsylvania District Court, Levin's younger brother commented on a light near the webcam that appeared to go on and off at odd times. His mother "dismissed the idea as absurd," but it appears he was right.
- Crito 13y ago
  "Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. Not like all the other LEDs that are on all the time and are mostly pointless." No longer plastering devices with semi-pointless LEDs would help. Harddrive activity? Wifi? Bluetooth? I don't think all these lights are really necessary. Throw one on the power cable maybe, and a few to backlight the keyboard, but otherwise only use them as indicator lights for things that are actually important to the standard user.
  - willismichael 13y ago
    Hey, I find the hard drive light very helpful in determining whether my system is thrashing for virtual memory, or likely stuck on some CPU-bound process.
    - AlisdairSH 13y ago
      99% of computer users have no idea what you just typed. HDD light blinking? That means it's working correctly. Am I right?
      - Mindless2112 13y ago
        Sure, but that remaining 1% is who those 99% go to when their computer isn't working properly.
        gmisra 13y ago
        We are the one percent? (sorry)
        nemothekid 13y ago
        In anycase, if I wanted to know if my drive was being trashed, I'd look at command like 'top'. If people can perform remote admin on machines 1000s of miles away without the need of green LEDs, I'm sure consumer tech will do just fine.
        robryk 13y ago
        The problem is that getting top to start can take a long time if it's actually thrashing heavily enough. I'd agree that the LED is nonessential with HDDs -- you can just listen; and then you can even make out whether it's doing a lot of seeking or long continuous accesses, but you can't do that with SSDs.
      - gizmo686 13y ago
        >HDD light blinking? That means it's working correctly. Am I right? In a lot of ways that is correct. Generally, when something is thrashing the hard drive it is making actual progress on its task, and its task is relativly short lived. This means that if your computer is going slowly, and the HDD LED is active, you can likely wait for the HDD LED to quiet down. In contrast, when your computer is going slowly (or not responding at all) and your HDD LED is off, it is much more likely that something is wrong and won't resolve itself.
- arrrg 13y ago
  Well, on MacBooks it’s the only LED. Ok, that’s slightly misleading, there is another one on the charging cable (indicating whether the device is connected to power and whether or not it is charging). This to me seems more like an application of Occam’s razor. Hardware or Software malfunctioning seems much more likely than someone spying on you.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    There was one in the front of the case. They had to use lasers to poke tiny holes in the aluminum. http://www.grafik.com/blog/2011/11/apple-sleep-function/ http://www.grafik.com/blog/2011/11/apple-sleep-function/ But yes, it's nice that they don't have a bunch of LEDs for everything.
- schnevets 13y ago
  Malware that spontaneously lights the LED without activating the camera so the user becomes accustomed to a false indicator. Or have the LED turn anytime the machine is left idle (but still on) in order to burn out the LED.
  - sirkneeland 13y ago
    Is it feasible to burn out the LED? Those things have lifespans of up to 100,000 hours, which means it's likelier the computer itself would be broken or obsoleted before the LED itself burns out.
    - userbinator 13y ago
      Indicator LEDs usually just dim (unnoticeably) over time. Catastrophic failures do occur, but tend to be more likely with high-power torch/backlight LEDs that are driven hard to produce the most light rather than indicators which are operated at "visible but not too bright" levels. I have a keyboard from '86 and its numlock LED is still working perfectly fine after nearly 3 decades.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. There is already a common pop-culture shorthand for "now recording," the blinking red light. That's cheap and simple, and everyone already knows what it means, particularly when it's on a camera. The real question, in my mind, is how the world-renowned user-experience and user-interface experts at Apple decided to use anything else.
  - cdcarter 13y ago
    A blinking red light would be fairly annoying for long video conferences and calls.
wmeredith 13y ago
It's such an obvious solution that I really thought that WAS the case until just now. Why in the world would you tackle this problem any other way?
- FireBeyond 13y ago
  Well, Apple and supporters (obligatory disclaimer: I own, and love, my rMBP, iPhone 5, and have two iPads in my house) have claimed that it was the case, and that it was physically impossible not to. Then again, Apple’s marketing for the iPhone 5s made many claims of “subdermal fields”, “RF micro fields produced by the human body”, and how, as a result, it couldn’t be faked. Except it could. Fairly easily. And without any remote pretense around the ‘emulate a live finger’. Just the fingerprint. Much as I like Apple, these are pretty bold-faced deceptions.
  - arrrg 13y ago
    “… and how, as a result, it couldn’t be faked.” Except, you know, they never actually said that.
  - valleyer 13y ago
    Citation needed on the Touch ID claims.
- cseelus 13y ago
  Exactly my thoughts. Hope anyone with more clue can explain this.
- Guvante 13y ago
  They basically did, the light can only be turned off when the USB signals "standby". The hack is to override the camera to ignore that signal. It is a rather unique idea and probably not something anyone even considered at Apple.
  - cnvogel 13y ago
    I don't think anyone at Apple considered this LED to be designed "tamper proof". They just lazily implemented a requirement possibly written as: -- A LED shall light up when the camera is activated. But what they should have implemented is: -- It shall not be possible to activate the camera without the LED being lit, taking malicious third-party software into account. The first requirement is obviously, and demonstrably, implemented by every camera (ignoring hardware defects regarding the LED). The second is, as proven by the paper, not fulfilled by any. {EDIT: added the malicious part to the 2nd requirement}
milhous 13y ago
I thought the same as well. An LED in series with the circuit powering the CMOS sensor is all that would be needed. No amount of reprogramming is going to bypass a physical circuit. This is disappointing, and I expect Apple will redesign the cameras because of it.
- StringyBob 13y ago
  The LED is wired up directly to light up in the opposite state of the standby signal (i.e. off control) to the camera module. However, the camera module has a programmable setting to ignore its standby pin, and the microcontroller can be programmed to do whatever it wants with the (now ignored) standby pin. The fact the camera controller could be reprogrammed from user space and then used to emulate a keyboard or mouse and bypass security / a virtual machine particularly devious, and shows how hard it is to trust even known hardware.
  - jdiez17 13y ago
    It's not really the camera controller that can be reprogrammed, it's the USB controller - there is a setting that the USB controller changes in the camera chip, but there is a nontrivial amount of logic done on the USB controller. Still, it's a very, very cool hack: they reprogram a microprocessor to send commands to another microprocessor and configure it in such a way that it enters a state where the pin that the LED is connected to is irrelevant.
- sudomal 13y ago
  > This is disappointing, and I expect Apple will redesign the cameras because of it. The article mentions that authorities have tools to bypass the LED. I would guess that the complexity is on purpose and wasn't supposed to be used by the general public. I bet the same is true for sound.
proee 13y ago
One of the best ways is to have a dedicated "Chip Enable" pin on the camera module. You then connect an LED to the state of this pin and when the Chip Enable pin is "Hight" the LED is turned on. However, there needs to be additional circuitry (an extra pin) and some work to ensure proper voltage levels are met for both the pin and the LED (extra cost). Another option is to enable the LED when power is turned onto the module.
- esmi 13y ago
  Look at figure 2 in the attached research paper. You'll find this is exactly how this model of iSight camera works. This interlock failed because the Micron sensor Apple used had software straps that could be reconfigured to have the sensor ignore its enable pin.
  - lawnchair_larry 13y ago
    What is a software strap? Tried to google what that is and how it works, but I don't see much. Is it known by another term?
    - userbinator 13y ago
      configuration.
      - lawnchair_larry 13y ago
        Not really what I'm looking for.
        shabble 13y ago
        It's increasingly common in modern ICs (SoCs and microcontrollers especially) to have only the minimum required connections be permanently assigned to physical pins. The rest of the pins are connected to some routing logic which in turn connects to the various chip internal signals. This is great in board design because you can often simplify PCB routing by reassigning pins as you need them for your layout, rather than other other way round. This is usually done at runtime, typically a bit of code that happens after the reset vector that puts the various config values into the appropriate registers that set up this routing and other customisable options. In the case here, it's those other options that are the issue. From the paper, Part IV(A): > The Micron image sensor has a 16 bit configuration register, RESET (which is distinct from the #RESET power on reset signal). RESET is addressable from the I2C interface at address 0x0D in register page 0 And the hack involves setting that configuration register to unexpected values to enable functionality that bypasses the LED display circuit: > Bit 7. Prevent STANDBY from affecting entry to or exit from the low-power state if set. > Bit 6. Prevent STANDBY from contributing to output enable control if set. (where STANDBY is the signal/pin to which the LED is connected) So the controller assumes that the physical STANDBY pin will always accurately reflect/control the state of the sensor, which is not necessarily the case if it's been disabled by re-configuration.
Theodores 13y ago
Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. The earliest standalone webcams, for instance Logitech models and the IndyCam that came with the Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation, had a 'door' that you could slide over the lens when not in use. Lenovo had this on their all in one PC's a few years ago but I don't think they kept that feature. What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? You would think it would be an essential feature for some.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? The fact that you can forget it open, duh!
  - anonymfus 13y ago
    It could be motorised :-)
- taf2 13y ago
  more parts, more cost, more to break, more dissatisfied customers, more customer service calls, more returns...
- justin66 13y ago
  > Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. Overengineering usually refers to something that's not simple or elegant or a solution which represents more effort than the problem calls for. None of those factors seem to apply here.
  - winstonx 13y ago
    A blinking light requires electricity. The sliding cover is purely mechanical, tamper evident, and requires physical access to hack. The sliding cover is simpler and more secure.
    - justin66 13y ago
qbrass 13y ago
OLPC XO-1's were designed that way.
Arelius 13y ago
It's not difficult, but it makes the system unflexible, The vendors, not worried about the privacy implications, choose what makes the system more flexible. I've heard that this was a serious flaw in Google's opinion, and they went through great efforts to ensure that the LED for the chromebook pixel was actually hard-wired into the camera's electronics. Which if true, shows that it's indeed possible.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  It's not difficult, but it makes the system unflexible... Um. That would be exactly the point of doing it, in this case. The camera indicator (and the microphone indicator that every laptop should but currently does not have) should be completely inflexible. What "flexibility" is added by having an indicator that only sort-of indicates, anyway?
  - Moto7451 13y ago
    +1. Seems like, at worst, any sort of manufacturing inflexibility is solved the same way they usually deal with this stuff: A ribbon cable. Then you just have to worry about the physical security of the machine which is its own independent issue regardless. Personally, I assumed they did it this way since it seems obvious (that's what I do in my own electronics projects) and much simpler than using a microcontroller to do it. I forwarded this idea to concerned friends. Looks like I'm eating my own words.
  - winstonx 13y ago
    I'm freaked out there's no microphone indicator.
    - midas007 13y ago
      There needs to be a LittleSnitch for I/O (camera, mic, USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire and Bluetooth)
  - userbinator 13y ago
    "flexibility" is the same reason for why we have software designs that are many times more complex than necessary, an IMHO it's a line of reasoning that should be questioned more. As a compromise, the indicator could be wired-OR: software can turn on the indicator if it wants to, and it gets turned on if the camera is on, but software cannot turn it OFF if the camera is on.
jrochkind1 13y ago
I am not an electrical engineer, I can't really judge the appropriateness or feasibility of various solutions. But in the research paper cited by the Wash Post[1], there's a whole section where the authors discuss their recommendations, see under "VIII. SECURE CAMERA DESIGNS". Including some specific suggestions of how you would implement this design in hardware. [1] https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/36569/camera.pdf?sequence=1 https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...
sneak 13y ago
> Simply place the LED inline or in parallel to the camera and you are done. Any time current is sent to the camera sensor, the LED cant help it but light up. So, upon (my incorrectly) presuming this was how it's already done in hardware and reading the headline of the article before I got to the text, I assumed they were turning it on and taking a single frame and turning it off fast enough that the LED was only on for a short enough time for the user not to be able to see it (or not notice). Turns out the article claims they just reprogrammed the microcontroller to not turn it on in the first place. Of course that's a bad design, but you do need some more logic in there - the light needs to stay on for a minimum time when the camera is functioning so that the user can notice it. This, too, is simple enough that it can be achieved without a microcontroller, but please don't presume that it's a simple fix. It's not just "put it in parallel".
- hnriot 13y ago
  it is just as simple as put the LED in parallel, if you want it to stay on for a "little while" put a capacitor in circuit too. Extremely basic EE.
  - asadlionpk 13y ago
    Yes I have no idea why they would control the LED from a microcontroller(some code) if the LED is a security feature!
elwell 13y ago
A hammer used to smash the camera component has been effective with this issue.
- NickSharp 13y ago
  No need for a hammer, I use tape.
borplk 13y ago
Story time .... a while ago I had a similar discussion with someone because I said I have a thick black tape on my Macbook's webcam and I rest easy knowing I cannot be spied on using that camera unless the laws of physics change. Of course many people made fun of it and mentioned "blah blah you are paranoid the LED cannot be manipulated and will always turn on ...". Well ... here you go. Where are you now? I wouldn't be surprised if someone-cough-you-know-who-cough had influenced the design for this to become a possibility. We know they are actively looking for opportunities like this. Go ahead, call me a paranoid again ... and next month when the story about how they did just that hits hacker news, I'll have an even better story to tell.

by x0054 13y ago

RBerenguel 13y ago

IIRC, in my old Macbook (early 2008) the led is actually inlined. Some machines had a weird hardware bug that shorted this area and sometimes the led would go on... and the camera would be useless until next reboot (mine was one of these, didn't realise until ~after 6 months of owning it

DanBC 13y ago

Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. Not like all the other LEDs that are on all the time and are mostly pointless. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/webcam-spy-settleme... http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386599,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386599,00.asp > When the school district investigated the case, it found other incidents of webcam spying, and notified the students involved, including Levin. According to the lawsuit, filed in Eastern Pennsylvania District Court, Levin's younger brother commented on a light near the webcam that appeared to go on and off at odd times. His mother "dismissed the idea as absurd," but it appears he was right.

Crito 13y ago
"Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. Not like all the other LEDs that are on all the time and are mostly pointless." No longer plastering devices with semi-pointless LEDs would help. Harddrive activity? Wifi? Bluetooth? I don't think all these lights are really necessary. Throw one on the power cable maybe, and a few to backlight the keyboard, but otherwise only use them as indicator lights for things that are actually important to the standard user.
- willismichael 13y ago
  Hey, I find the hard drive light very helpful in determining whether my system is thrashing for virtual memory, or likely stuck on some CPU-bound process.
  - AlisdairSH 13y ago
    99% of computer users have no idea what you just typed. HDD light blinking? That means it's working correctly. Am I right?
    - Mindless2112 13y ago
      Sure, but that remaining 1% is who those 99% go to when their computer isn't working properly.
      - gmisra 13y ago
        We are the one percent? (sorry)
      - nemothekid 13y ago
        In anycase, if I wanted to know if my drive was being trashed, I'd look at command like 'top'. If people can perform remote admin on machines 1000s of miles away without the need of green LEDs, I'm sure consumer tech will do just fine.
        robryk 13y ago
        The problem is that getting top to start can take a long time if it's actually thrashing heavily enough. I'd agree that the LED is nonessential with HDDs -- you can just listen; and then you can even make out whether it's doing a lot of seeking or long continuous accesses, but you can't do that with SSDs.
    - gizmo686 13y ago
      >HDD light blinking? That means it's working correctly. Am I right? In a lot of ways that is correct. Generally, when something is thrashing the hard drive it is making actual progress on its task, and its task is relativly short lived. This means that if your computer is going slowly, and the HDD LED is active, you can likely wait for the HDD LED to quiet down. In contrast, when your computer is going slowly (or not responding at all) and your HDD LED is off, it is much more likely that something is wrong and won't resolve itself.
arrrg 13y ago
Well, on MacBooks it’s the only LED. Ok, that’s slightly misleading, there is another one on the charging cable (indicating whether the device is connected to power and whether or not it is charging). This to me seems more like an application of Occam’s razor. Hardware or Software malfunctioning seems much more likely than someone spying on you.
- DanBC 13y ago
  There was one in the front of the case. They had to use lasers to poke tiny holes in the aluminum. http://www.grafik.com/blog/2011/11/apple-sleep-function/ http://www.grafik.com/blog/2011/11/apple-sleep-function/ But yes, it's nice that they don't have a bunch of LEDs for everything.
schnevets 13y ago
Malware that spontaneously lights the LED without activating the camera so the user becomes accustomed to a false indicator. Or have the LED turn anytime the machine is left idle (but still on) in order to burn out the LED.
- sirkneeland 13y ago
  Is it feasible to burn out the LED? Those things have lifespans of up to 100,000 hours, which means it's likelier the computer itself would be broken or obsoleted before the LED itself burns out.
  - userbinator 13y ago
    Indicator LEDs usually just dim (unnoticeably) over time. Catastrophic failures do occur, but tend to be more likely with high-power torch/backlight LEDs that are driven hard to produce the most light rather than indicators which are operated at "visible but not too bright" levels. I have a keyboard from '86 and its numlock LED is still working perfectly fine after nearly 3 decades.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
Now all you have to do is warn users that the one LED is important and means something. There is already a common pop-culture shorthand for "now recording," the blinking red light. That's cheap and simple, and everyone already knows what it means, particularly when it's on a camera. The real question, in my mind, is how the world-renowned user-experience and user-interface experts at Apple decided to use anything else.
- cdcarter 13y ago
  A blinking red light would be fairly annoying for long video conferences and calls.

wmeredith 13y ago

It's such an obvious solution that I really thought that WAS the case until just now. Why in the world would you tackle this problem any other way?

FireBeyond 13y ago
Well, Apple and supporters (obligatory disclaimer: I own, and love, my rMBP, iPhone 5, and have two iPads in my house) have claimed that it was the case, and that it was physically impossible not to. Then again, Apple’s marketing for the iPhone 5s made many claims of “subdermal fields”, “RF micro fields produced by the human body”, and how, as a result, it couldn’t be faked. Except it could. Fairly easily. And without any remote pretense around the ‘emulate a live finger’. Just the fingerprint. Much as I like Apple, these are pretty bold-faced deceptions.
- arrrg 13y ago
  “… and how, as a result, it couldn’t be faked.” Except, you know, they never actually said that.
- valleyer 13y ago
  Citation needed on the Touch ID claims.
cseelus 13y ago
Exactly my thoughts. Hope anyone with more clue can explain this.
Guvante 13y ago
They basically did, the light can only be turned off when the USB signals "standby". The hack is to override the camera to ignore that signal. It is a rather unique idea and probably not something anyone even considered at Apple.
- cnvogel 13y ago
  I don't think anyone at Apple considered this LED to be designed "tamper proof". They just lazily implemented a requirement possibly written as: -- A LED shall light up when the camera is activated. But what they should have implemented is: -- It shall not be possible to activate the camera without the LED being lit, taking malicious third-party software into account. The first requirement is obviously, and demonstrably, implemented by every camera (ignoring hardware defects regarding the LED). The second is, as proven by the paper, not fulfilled by any. {EDIT: added the malicious part to the 2nd requirement}

milhous 13y ago

I thought the same as well. An LED in series with the circuit powering the CMOS sensor is all that would be needed. No amount of reprogramming is going to bypass a physical circuit. This is disappointing, and I expect Apple will redesign the cameras because of it.

StringyBob 13y ago
The LED is wired up directly to light up in the opposite state of the standby signal (i.e. off control) to the camera module. However, the camera module has a programmable setting to ignore its standby pin, and the microcontroller can be programmed to do whatever it wants with the (now ignored) standby pin. The fact the camera controller could be reprogrammed from user space and then used to emulate a keyboard or mouse and bypass security / a virtual machine particularly devious, and shows how hard it is to trust even known hardware.
- jdiez17 13y ago
  It's not really the camera controller that can be reprogrammed, it's the USB controller - there is a setting that the USB controller changes in the camera chip, but there is a nontrivial amount of logic done on the USB controller. Still, it's a very, very cool hack: they reprogram a microprocessor to send commands to another microprocessor and configure it in such a way that it enters a state where the pin that the LED is connected to is irrelevant.
sudomal 13y ago
> This is disappointing, and I expect Apple will redesign the cameras because of it. The article mentions that authorities have tools to bypass the LED. I would guess that the complexity is on purpose and wasn't supposed to be used by the general public. I bet the same is true for sound.

proee 13y ago

One of the best ways is to have a dedicated "Chip Enable" pin on the camera module. You then connect an LED to the state of this pin and when the Chip Enable pin is "Hight" the LED is turned on. However, there needs to be additional circuitry (an extra pin) and some work to ensure proper voltage levels are met for both the pin and the LED (extra cost). Another option is to enable the LED when power is turned onto the module.

esmi 13y ago
Look at figure 2 in the attached research paper. You'll find this is exactly how this model of iSight camera works. This interlock failed because the Micron sensor Apple used had software straps that could be reconfigured to have the sensor ignore its enable pin.
- lawnchair_larry 13y ago
  What is a software strap? Tried to google what that is and how it works, but I don't see much. Is it known by another term?
  - userbinator 13y ago
    configuration.
    - lawnchair_larry 13y ago
      Not really what I'm looking for.
      - shabble 13y ago
        It's increasingly common in modern ICs (SoCs and microcontrollers especially) to have only the minimum required connections be permanently assigned to physical pins. The rest of the pins are connected to some routing logic which in turn connects to the various chip internal signals. This is great in board design because you can often simplify PCB routing by reassigning pins as you need them for your layout, rather than other other way round. This is usually done at runtime, typically a bit of code that happens after the reset vector that puts the various config values into the appropriate registers that set up this routing and other customisable options. In the case here, it's those other options that are the issue. From the paper, Part IV(A): > The Micron image sensor has a 16 bit configuration register, RESET (which is distinct from the #RESET power on reset signal). RESET is addressable from the I2C interface at address 0x0D in register page 0 And the hack involves setting that configuration register to unexpected values to enable functionality that bypasses the LED display circuit: > Bit 7. Prevent STANDBY from affecting entry to or exit from the low-power state if set. > Bit 6. Prevent STANDBY from contributing to output enable control if set. (where STANDBY is the signal/pin to which the LED is connected) So the controller assumes that the physical STANDBY pin will always accurately reflect/control the state of the sensor, which is not necessarily the case if it's been disabled by re-configuration.

Theodores 13y ago

Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. The earliest standalone webcams, for instance Logitech models and the IndyCam that came with the Silicon Graphics 'Indy' workstation, had a 'door' that you could slide over the lens when not in use. Lenovo had this on their all in one PC's a few years ago but I don't think they kept that feature. What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? You would think it would be an essential feature for some.

coldtea 13y ago
>What was wrong with the slide-across lens cover? The fact that you can forget it open, duh!
- anonymfus 13y ago
  It could be motorised :-)
taf2 13y ago
more parts, more cost, more to break, more dissatisfied customers, more customer service calls, more returns...
justin66 13y ago
> Having an inline LED is still a bit over-engineered in my opinion. Overengineering usually refers to something that's not simple or elegant or a solution which represents more effort than the problem calls for. None of those factors seem to apply here.
- winstonx 13y ago
  A blinking light requires electricity. The sliding cover is purely mechanical, tamper evident, and requires physical access to hack. The sliding cover is simpler and more secure.
  - justin66 13y ago

qbrass 13y ago

OLPC XO-1's were designed that way.

Arelius 13y ago

It's not difficult, but it makes the system unflexible, The vendors, not worried about the privacy implications, choose what makes the system more flexible. I've heard that this was a serious flaw in Google's opinion, and they went through great efforts to ensure that the LED for the chromebook pixel was actually hard-wired into the camera's electronics. Which if true, shows that it's indeed possible.

Lagged2Death 13y ago
It's not difficult, but it makes the system unflexible... Um. That would be exactly the point of doing it, in this case. The camera indicator (and the microphone indicator that every laptop should but currently does not have) should be completely inflexible. What "flexibility" is added by having an indicator that only sort-of indicates, anyway?
- Moto7451 13y ago
  +1. Seems like, at worst, any sort of manufacturing inflexibility is solved the same way they usually deal with this stuff: A ribbon cable. Then you just have to worry about the physical security of the machine which is its own independent issue regardless. Personally, I assumed they did it this way since it seems obvious (that's what I do in my own electronics projects) and much simpler than using a microcontroller to do it. I forwarded this idea to concerned friends. Looks like I'm eating my own words.
- winstonx 13y ago
  I'm freaked out there's no microphone indicator.
  - midas007 13y ago
    There needs to be a LittleSnitch for I/O (camera, mic, USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire and Bluetooth)
- userbinator 13y ago
  "flexibility" is the same reason for why we have software designs that are many times more complex than necessary, an IMHO it's a line of reasoning that should be questioned more. As a compromise, the indicator could be wired-OR: software can turn on the indicator if it wants to, and it gets turned on if the camera is on, but software cannot turn it OFF if the camera is on.

jrochkind1 13y ago

I am not an electrical engineer, I can't really judge the appropriateness or feasibility of various solutions. But in the research paper cited by the Wash Post[1], there's a whole section where the authors discuss their recommendations, see under "VIII. SECURE CAMERA DESIGNS". Including some specific suggestions of how you would implement this design in hardware. [1] https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/36569/camera.pdf?sequence=1 https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...

sneak 13y ago

> Simply place the LED inline or in parallel to the camera and you are done. Any time current is sent to the camera sensor, the LED cant help it but light up. So, upon (my incorrectly) presuming this was how it's already done in hardware and reading the headline of the article before I got to the text, I assumed they were turning it on and taking a single frame and turning it off fast enough that the LED was only on for a short enough time for the user not to be able to see it (or not notice). Turns out the article claims they just reprogrammed the microcontroller to not turn it on in the first place. Of course that's a bad design, but you do need some more logic in there - the light needs to stay on for a minimum time when the camera is functioning so that the user can notice it. This, too, is simple enough that it can be achieved without a microcontroller, but please don't presume that it's a simple fix. It's not just "put it in parallel".

hnriot 13y ago
it is just as simple as put the LED in parallel, if you want it to stay on for a "little while" put a capacitor in circuit too. Extremely basic EE.
- asadlionpk 13y ago
  Yes I have no idea why they would control the LED from a microcontroller(some code) if the LED is a security feature!

elwell 13y ago

A hammer used to smash the camera component has been effective with this issue.

NickSharp 13y ago
No need for a hammer, I use tape.

borplk 13y ago

Story time .... a while ago I had a similar discussion with someone because I said I have a thick black tape on my Macbook's webcam and I rest easy knowing I cannot be spied on using that camera unless the laws of physics change. Of course many people made fun of it and mentioned "blah blah you are paranoid the LED cannot be manipulated and will always turn on ...". Well ... here you go. Where are you now? I wouldn't be surprised if someone-cough-you-know-who-cough had influenced the design for this to become a possibility. We know they are actively looking for opportunities like this. Go ahead, call me a paranoid again ... and next month when the story about how they did just that hits hacker news, I'll have an even better story to tell.