zlacker

>>xairy+(OP)
I thought the whole point of these camera LEDs was to have them wired to/through the power to the camera, so they are always on when the camera is getting power, no matter what.

Having the LED control exposed through the firmware completely defeats this.

>>sbarre+T1
They are hardwired on Macbooks. From Daring Fireball, quoting an email from an Apple engineer.

> All cameras after [2008] were different: The hardware team tied the LED to a hardware signal from the sensor: If the (I believe) vertical sync was active, the LED would light up. There is NO firmware control to disable/enable the LED. The actual firmware is indeed flashable, but the part is not a generic part and there are mechanisms in place to verify the image being flashed. […]

> So, no, I don’t believe that malware could be installed to enable the camera without lighting the LED. My concern would be a situation where a frame is captured so the LED is lit only for a very brief period of time.

https://daringfireball.net/2019/02/on_covering_webcams

>>542458+96
>The actual firmware is indeed flashable, but the part is not a generic part and there are mechanisms in place to verify the image being flashed.

That might make it harder to develop a hack, but one would hope that if the hardware team tied the LED to a hardware signal, it would not matter if the firmware were reflashed.

>>aftbit+U7
AFAIK iOS devices use a tiny firmware on the camera and a larger one on the secure enclave chip.

If you successfully compromise the host OS and also the secure enclave firmware, that might be enough to let you turn on the camera (without vsync) and reconstruct the correct image via later analysis... but at that point you have committed tens of millions to the hack (so you'd better not overuse it or it'll get noticed & patched).