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A comment on FBI director: Cover up your webcam. Parent comment

Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by krastanov on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:12PM (#12503097)
In terms of electronics it is fairly trivial and it can be inspected by eye (or microscope) if the manufacturer decides to not encapsulate everything on a chip (which presumably would be the point of such a feature).

Just have the only positive voltage rail going to the camera be the same one that is directly powering the LED. The firmware will be turning this rail on and off, hence turning the camera and the LED on and off simultaneously.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by 1_2__3 on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:50PM (#12503272)
Idle though on possible attack vectors:

Convince the firmware to use a lower voltage, one that doesn't hit the breakover voltage on the LED but still powers the camera.

Strobe the line, get snapshots without the LED doing more than very faintly glowing.

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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by krastanov on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @11:58PM (#12503302)
I have a very hard time believing that the camera itself will not brownout in such a case.
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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by umanwizard on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:43AM (#12503726)
LED activation voltage is less than what cameras typically require.
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Re:FBI director: Cover up your webcam by 3chelon on Thursday September 15, 2016 @05:22AM (#12504547)
Neat ideas. It never even occurred to me that the power rail would be voltage-programmable, but of course it probably would.

Your second idea is even more scary and realistic.

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