6 ms·

>I had Claude write a tool to patch out the table entry for camera activity, fix up the integrity hash, and flash it to the camera. A quick test showed that the

• kestrel-robotic 24d ago
  > the LED can't be controlled from software If you look at tear downs apparently it is connected to the webcam so it is energized when the webcam receives power making it nearly impossible to defeat. You can say a lot about Apple but the engineering is clever at the hardware level.
  • Barbing 24d ago
    Also the Hall effect sensor disabling the mic when a MacBook lid is closed, apparently just about impossible to bypass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect
    • dncornholio 24d ago
      It's not. I can place my iPhone next to my trackpad and the MacBook thinks I closed the lid.
      • BYazfVCcq 24d ago
        That's not what people mean by 'bypassing', turning it off is obviously easy. The point is that activating the microphone while the lid is closed is pretty much impossible.
  • ryandrake 24d ago
    It's not even that clever, really. The camera power rail must be physically close to the camera, so it's trivial to hang an LED off it. A device manufacturer has to go out of their way to make it so the LED and camera function are independent, and I'm sure many do, for the worst reasons you can possibly think of.
    • Gigachad 24d ago
      It's more a testament to how little most companies care. The solution is simple and yet most products are defective.
      • randyrand 24d ago
        For most products the LED is not a simple on/off indicator. It signals device state, user confirmations, ota updates, etc etc etc. I’m at a loss for how you would signal all of that without a GPIO.
        • Gigachad 24d ago
          The record indicator should be purely reserved for showing if the camera is on. If you want to show all that other stuff, put a second LED on it.
    • Marsymars 24d ago
      Nest cameras used to have a user toggle to enable/disable the camera LED; not the worst reason I can think of.
      • mschuster91 24d ago
        Yeah, and then came people hiding cameras in places where you clearly did not want a camera to be. Bathrooms in public areas, hotels, workplaces and AirBnBs are a much too common issue, it's like daily news some creep gets busted for running cameras.
        • Marsymars 23d ago
          Yeah, my implication was just that the worst thing I could think of were cameras where the owners don't realize that some third-party is recording them. LEDs won't stop creeps — the camera owner can always disable LEDs with a bit of electrical tape.
  • AshamedCaptain 24d ago
    This still would allow one to "strobe" the power line making it impossible for a human to see the LED but the camera could still capture snapshots and at a decent framerate even.
    • NavinF 23d ago
      Naw the LED stays on a little longer after you stop capturing image data. They either have burned in firmware or a simple circuit (RC and comparator) that stops your attack.
• sneak 24d ago
  Apple also claims that iMessage is end to end encrypted. Their privacy stance is 99% posturing.
  • Barbing 24d ago
    The teardown showed this is the 1% right? Also I thought you could trust iMessage if, unlike everyone, you disabled iCloud backup (and, unlike everyone, so did the recipient). Perhaps a way for the feds to be able to pin dumb criminals while giving investigative journalists & dissidents a way to stay safer.
    • exprez135 24d ago
      According to Apple, you can have iCloud backup enabled while maintaining E2E encryption with their Advanced Data Protection option: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651#advanced https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651#advanced You do have to be sure to not enable web access via icloud.com
      • Gigachad 24d ago
        You also have to make sure everyone you contact did this, which is impossible. Much easier to use a 3rd party app like Signal.
    • MertsA 24d ago
      Even with "E2E" encryption with iMessage, you're still trusting Apple completely and totally with key distribution. If a new device is added to your account by an attacker or by Apple themselves, your existing devices will happily loop them in to share iMessage access with them. The vast, vast majority of iMessage users are never going to dig into the Apple keychain app to actually check what keys are being trusted and this is something that can be targeted to a single account so no one outside of Apple never even needs to know it happened.
      • lloeki 23d ago
        CKV aims to cover that case: https://support.apple.com/en-us/118246 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118246 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118247 https://support.apple.com/en-us/118247 > An unrecognized new device was added to that person’s Apple Account. This alert might mean that the person you are messaging has an issue with one of their devices, or that a sophisticated attacker might be attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation. My understanding is that iMessage implements PFS. To get around PFS and access older messages, one needs to get their hand on a backup, which needs fully enrolling a device, not just messaging key exchange hackery. And as far as trusting Apple with key exchange, well, if you're running their OS and hardware, I suppose that trust of key exchange is the least of your concern (or part of the whole deal anyway depending on how you look at it)
• bayindirh 24d ago
  One of my old Logitech webcams have its recording light wired up to V4L2 protocol directly. I can change its recording light mode (on/off/blink) from software by changing recording light mode directly. Wonder whether that Insta360 also had that. I'd have tried that first before diving into the firmware head-first.