OverSight, the Free Tool for Preventing Hackers from Accessing your MacBook’s Webcam and Microphone
Security researcher and former NSA staffer Patrick Wardle is this afternoon demonstrating a way for Mac malware to tap into live feeds from the built-in webcam and microphone. His presentation is being delivered at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today.
Although any unauthorized access to the webcam will light the green LED – a firmware-level protection that is exceedingly difficult to bypass – Wardle’s presentation shows how a malicious app can tap into the outgoing feed of an existing webcam session, like a FaceTime or Skype call, where the light would already be on …
Wardle was the researcher who previously uncovered a way for malware to bypass Gatekeeper protection to run unsigned apps, as well as pointing out a flaw in Apple’s fix for the Rootpipe vulnerability that allowed an attacker with local access to a Mac to escalate their privileges to root.
