Controlling someone else's laptop webcam

They show this in movies, but is it possible by a virus? If so why we haven't heard about stalkers doing it?

I assume technically it is possible. Maybe it is just not worth the risk. Also,
wouldn't the laptop show that the webcam is working???

P.S.: Nicsefan doesn't need to reply...

 

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Teachers spying on students through laptop webcams

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Yes it's possible to control someones webcam, there have been trojan's made that allow the execution of programs on a persons computer with a Terminal output, so they could watch you through your webcam, watch what films you are watching, or listen to whatever it is your listening to.

The only things that give it away are:

• A decrease in system performance since both your processor and memory will have extra usage.
• A decrease in network performance, since your bandwidth will be being used.
• Potentially there is also the possibility for "glitches" like a mouse cursor moving wildly, or programs operating strangely.(This is of course dependent on how well programmed the trojan is and whether it hooks properly to the system or attempts to use dirty work arounds.)

Most standard video streaming applications utilise a TCP port to generate a control handshake, with UDP ports used for the majority of the data stream.

There is one other potential for watching a video stream but that requires a "Man in the middle" method and requires you to already be streaming the cam.

 

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A more interesting case:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol...er-tracking-company-sex-spying-163335471.html

 

Apparently there was a Lojack case during the London riots, a laptop happened to be stolen from someone that had installed it. So such "Legitimate" programs can be handy, however one of the main problem with legitimate tracking/backdoors is the fact that anti-virus programs are asked to "Omit their presence with their results". It basically means that if a legitimate program is "hacked" it can get around the majority of anti-virus security people rely upon.

 

Assuming the host runs windows and .Net framework, I can write an application that can do this actually. The only thing that would give it away is the light turning on whenever the camera was activated.

The app will be very quick and will shouldn't cause any performance problems on the host computer. A project that I'm working on right now actually runs on an old p3 600 with ~ 300 megs of ram, so any modern computer should be a cinch.

 

Not to mention all the iphone applications, which allows access to call logs, emails, text, their location, and you can listen in all the conversations. This should make the need for private detectives obsolete. Scary stuff.

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