Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Should you cover your webcam?”.
( ominous music ), You’ve probably seen people cover their webcams, but should you cover your webcam Former FBI director James Comey thinks you should. [ Interviewer ]. Do you still have a piece of tape over your cameras at home, Heck, yeah, heck, yeah., Edward Snowden and even Mark Zuckerberg appear to cover theirs. It could protect you from attacks like the one Miss Teen USA, experienced in 2013, in which a man secretly spied on Her and recorded her and then blackmailed her., But you’re, not a head of state and you’re, also not a celebrity.. So do you really need to worry about someone spying on you through your laptop’s camera? Well, yeah.
(, steady, electronic music ) In 2013, a hacker told the BBC that access to a woman’s webcam cost about a dollar and that he had access to 500 computers., That’s crazy, So to find out how common these attacks are and whether we should be worried. I talked to Tod Beardsley, the research director at cybersecurity and penetration testing company Rapid7.. There are occasionally bugs in web-based technologies that allow attackers to open your webcam and record video on it. They’re pretty far and few in between.
[ Ashley ]. He explained to me that these vulnerabilities often show up in Flash and Java, and at this point there might even been one in html5.. What really sucks is that you won’t know if a website is affected. Also hackers can turn off your webcam’s light, so you won’t actually know whether you’ve been compromised..
That’S not great Anything that wants you to click in a very specific place in your browser. That would be very suspect.. You see it a lot more now with location services like “ click here to allow location, service”, that’s typically the control on webcams as well. There’s, not a lot. You can do about it other than ( clicks tongue to mimic sticky tape, ), Okay, so at least tape will stop someone from spying on you visually. That’S a relief., But how effective is covering our webcams and should we do it? Having it covered is a super cheap super easy thing to do. That also doesn’t get you a lot, but at least it makes you feel better right, And it is a signal to other people that you think about security.. Okay, so Tod says it can’t hurt, but covering your laptop camera doesn’t actually address the much bigger risk of your cellphone camera and microphone.
Microphone. Hacking is probably just as creepy and incriminating as a video.. I can record conversations in the room that piece of tape is not gon na stop me. [ Ashley ].
We actually tested this. ( cellphone ringing ) [ Woman On Phone ], Hey., Hey okay! So, can you try to talk to me with your phone away from your face, [ Woman On Phone ], Sure. ( microphone, static, ), [, Woman On Phone ]? This is about how loudly I would talk if I was having a conversation with someone in a room.. Okay, so I can hear you pretty perfectly meaning if a hacker had hacked into your microphone.
Even if you had tape over it here, she would still be able to hear what you’re saying. I hate to break it to you all, but the reality is that cameras and microphones are everywhere now. .