Is webcam hacking paranoia justified?
Should you cover your webcam with tape? APC’s editor weighs in.
About a year ago, one of my friends purchased a webcam cover for her MacBook — a little plastic slider that sticks over the lense and can be opened or shut to reveal the camera. I didn’t give it too much thought at the time — I run antivirus on all my machines, so I assumed I was protected. But with people like the CEO of Facebook and the director of the FBI both adopting the practice (the lawenforcement agency has covers installed on all its laptops), it’s worth delving a bit deeper into.
It turns out that there’s a burgeoning industry for hacked webcams, with dedicated tools built specifically for the purpose of hijacking them. Usually, these get installed via phishing emails, where a user clicks on a link that surreptitiously downloads and installs the monitoring app without their awareness. Back in 2014, the FBI busted a number of hackers using a program called Blackshades, which had apparently infected over half a million PCs.
While most antivirus programs should identify and quarantine threats like these, there’s no such thing as a 100% bulletproof security suite — and there are often few signs that you’ve been infected. These secret monitoring apps don’t activate a camera’s recording lights and women, it seems, are the more highly-prized targets, according to a 2013 report filed by the BBC (see www.bbc.com/news/uk-22967622).
One telltale sign can be sudden battery drain, but as there are many things that can cause that symptom, it’s by no means a definitive way to tell. In short, this is one area where you might want to heed the warnings and invest in a cheap webcam cover — you can find them on eBay for under $5 — or at the very least, put some electrical tape over your laptop’s lense.
LINUX VS WINDOWS
Over the last few months, we’ve received quite a few requests from readers asking for a ‘Windows vs Linux’ feature — something to make switching to the open-source OS a little easier on newcomers. Linux is a lot simpler to get to grips with today than it was 10 years ago, but many of us are still hesitant about jumping to an entirely new OS, understandably.
This month, we’ve pieced together a sort of beginners guide to Linux, largely focused around Mint OS, that we hope covers most of the questions a potential switcher could have — and if there’s anything we’ve missed, you can always shoot us your questions to apcmag@futurenet.com.
I count myself as a Linux dabbler — I’ve got it installed on a media PC at home, but am by no means an expert. Some of the revelations in Mr Peers’ feature on page 70 were, therefore, quite informative when it came to filling in the blanks — so don’t worry if you feel a bit nonplussed by some elements of Linux; you’re in good company!