I can watch you on your built in webcam if you come to my website!!!

Originally posted by Deja`Vu
You have a great post here! making people aware of these issues.

Thank you, it has grown into a very interesting post.

Originally posted by whatevername
badw0lf is right, being a computer programmer I can tell from experience.

It is NOT possible to start video recording from a website alone unnoticed.

I have searched for this and did not find anything. Therefor I assume that it does not exist.

So because it isn't easily found via a simple search over the net
this means it doesn't exist?

Wow.

Did you miss the Deny Ignorance this site stands for?

Originally posted by twodee
reply to post by Chinesis

 

I answered your question, don't shoot the messenger.

The answer to my question would be:

No it is not possible because_______________.
I didn't shoot the messenger, just his questionable decorum.

Originally posted by Aristophrenia
reply to post by pianopraze

 

Never said it was coded by the CIA -

www.abovetopsecret.com...


One of my masters was in International Relations - worked specifically on Peter Singer - Wired for War where he discusses the Iron Triangle with CIA funded venture capital groups.

Thank you for the wonderful link

Once again, I would like to add that nearly everyone has update running and uses all sorts of trail software and applications. The ability of rouge people government or otherwise is embedded in the very software you purchase with the computer.

Thinking you are SAFE because you have NORTON running and have not clicked on anything or visited a porn website is laughable.

To those that have said many times that this post is pure scaremongering; if you define scaremongering as re-educating people about the realities of how their computers operate to break them out of the LIE everyone is taught, then you have me bang to rights, guilty as charged!

If any government shill is unhappy because my comments could effect your work TOUGH! that is my job!

A while back Norton forgot to digitally sign an update and it showed up as a virus on peoples computers. The wonderful people here on ATS and other places hacked the code and found out it was going to a data mining location for the government. I'm sure someone here can provide a link.

Far from protecting your privacy Norton, and probably other anti-virus companies are the culprits.

Originally posted by joesomebody
but anyway, there is no such thing as a secure computer.

Not connected to a network or the internet, you say? That's fine, I'll pick your locks while you're at work and install a keylogger and copy any unencrypted files that way. Then I'll come back later for your passwords in the keylogger, as well as your truecrypted files.

Time for a slight modification to that stupid scenario. After you pick my locks you will be greeted at the door by a Lab, Chow and a Dobie, none of which will be making you feel welcome. (there will also be a cat there that might try to say hello and ask to be petted.) Assuming that you do manage to get more than 1 or 2 steps further into the house you will get a chance to briefly meet my wife and her 20 guage. Since you will more than likely take 2 to 3 blasts to the upper chest and face I doubt you will be coming back at any time for any reason.
Even so, I have policies set that you must be a local admin to install anything, including PNP devices/software. That, a HDD password and a login that requires a smart card and pin...

I'd call that secure enough.

reply to post by Kryyptyk


/dev null

reply to post by Sideband


In that case I'd just put together a team armed with tranquilizer pistols. Problem solved...

Anyway, HDD passwords are easy to crack unless it's one of the newer drives with hardware encryption (those are really cool drives), and I could install a hardware keylogger like an inline keyboard device or a usb rubber ducky, and still be in business.

If I wanted to get more elaborate, I could connect an arduino with a GSM cellular card to the thing, and then I could remotely access your machine any time I wanted after I capture your HDD password (the keylogger is hardware, not software).

There is no such thing as secure, you can just make it a serious pain in the ass for anyone who tries to get your stuff, though.

I'm being hypothetical here - this is how the feds would do it.

The vulnerability really exists for IP camera's and people that do not secure their routers.
Most of these types of webcams communicate via HTTP on port 80, and a clever hack can ferret them out with a port scan on your WAN IP. Simple stuff.

Originally posted by charlyv
The vulnerability really exists for IP camera's and people that do not secure their routers.
Most of these types of webcams communicate via HTTP on port 80, and a clever hack can ferret them out with a port scan on your WAN IP. Simple stuff.

You can also find them exposed on google...haha.
www.hackersforcharity.org...

To save me going through all the pages, has anyone posted anything remotely like proof yet?

At the moment this is just a thought experiment by a lot of bored people winding up easily scared people.

Evidence people, always good to support an argument. Not asking too much am I?

Originally posted by theregonnakillme
reply to post by madmangunradio

 

I have not done any programming for Linux so can not comment, but i use a MacBookPro and still cover the camera!

That's not so easy to do on a Linux box, but anyway for those who use it, you can install the "camera monitor" app(is in most distro's repositories ) so, when the camera is ON it will warn you and a icon will be there to remind you

Peace

When I first got my Imac, I taped the camera up too, because I assume if they can, they will. I first thought of the Chinese, the ones who put our Macs together, and what a great opportunity for them to spy on us.

spec

Most of the web cams that have an LED do include a software setting to control whether it turns on/off. In principle, this means other software can modify the same setting. However, I don't know of any API for doing this through Flash, Silverlight, or Java applets. More likely, one would exploit a bug in one of those (or Adobe Reader, etc.) to compromise your whole system, and at that point your web cam and everything else is compromised. So "I can put some code on a web page and record you without you knowing" is true to the same extent as "I can put some code on a web page and gain control of your whole computer."

(Unless I'm wrong about the lack of API for changing the web cam driver's settings.)

Originally posted by theregonnakillme
reply to post by silent thunder

 

It is a reality and has been ever since they were introduced. Anyone who works in software will tell you that accessing a webcam takes a SINGLE like of code : - cvCaptureFromCAM

I don't know why everyone didn't suspect this. Once on facebook while I was attempting to upload a video it started filming me! (I had hit the wrong option) You may as well of slapped me in the face, Talk about invasion of privacy. My camera is not attached when I am not using it.

Originally posted by ommadawn
To save me going through all the pages, has anyone posted anything remotely like proof yet?

At the moment this is just a thought experiment by a lot of bored people winding up easily scared people.

Evidence people, always good to support an argument. Not asking too much am I?

The only reason you want the code is so you can start peeping in on others!

Originally posted by ommadawn
To save me going through all the pages, has anyone posted anything remotely like proof yet?

At the moment this is just a thought experiment by a lot of bored people winding up easily scared people.

Evidence people, always good to support an argument. Not asking too much am I?

The only reason you want the code is so you can start peeping in on others!

reply to post by ommadawn


See my post on page 7



www.abovetopsecret.com...

Also like I said, I think a simple clickjack over the permission dialog would hide it and therefor you would grant access and not even know it. That's if you can have flash set in a website to automatically try to access your cam.

This whole topic is one big joke.
Let me give you some reason:

You are assuming that there are websites out there that capture your webcam stream unnoticed.
For this plan to work the websites that are used should be popular websites, like facebook or gmail.
In that case, they have to record every user, because it would be too difficult to adjust those websites to single users just for the purpose of camming them.
So now we are talking about multiple websites capturing all of the webcam videos of all of its users.
Do you have any idea what kind of a webserver/harddisk storage etc. you would need for that?

Besides that, in order to make it useful they would have to be able to screen it automatically for faces, subjects, names and stuff like that.
If such a system was available today, don't you think that either the banks/gov wouldn't use it to recover their missing notes, or that youtube would use it to automatically remove those nasty conspiracy movies and all that stuff?
I think the reason that such a system is not in place is that neither the software nor the hardware to run such a system are present yet.

That being said, I think everyone can freely browse the web without being afraid of being monitored.
That is, of course, unless you are dumb enough to download crazy programs that spy on your computer yourself. They are often disguised as free games, or useful tools/cracks.
The general rule is, whatever door there is for an intruder to enter, you first have to open that door yourself.

Take care.