Barir's World
Humanity To Others;Knowledge Is Not Ours To Keep Alone;Your Mind Is Your Most Precious Resource
Q: I have a webcam on my PC. Is it possible for a hacker to hijack it and see me?
A: I hate to be the bearer of creepy tidings, but it is possible. Anything that is connected to a computer on the Internet is at risk of being compromised, whether it's a file sitting on a hard drive or a peripheral device such as a webcam or microphone. A computer programmer was arrested in Madrid, Spain, in 2005 for writing a virus that allowed him to take over webcams to record pictures and videos of his victims — while he was also stealing their bank account passwords, among other things.
The good news is that your virus protection software should eliminate these webcam worries right alongside other outside threats. As long as your software's virus profile database is up to date, you're as safe as possible.
In addition to virus-scanning software, a good firewall might help more network-savvy people determine if their webcams are streaming data to an outside source. Then again, if a computer has been compromised by a virus or Trojan, the firewall might be as well.
Of course, the most secure piece of hardware is the one that isn't plugged in, so if you're really sketched out by the idea that someone might be spying on you, simply unplug your camera from the USB port. If, like me, you have an unpluggable webcam embedded in your laptop screen, you may want to blindfold it with a piece of tape.
On the other hand, I wouldn't worry too much about Internet Peeping Toms. Relatively few webcam-controlling viruses have appeared, at least partly because the hardware varies from PC to PC. Writing one virus that works with all those models would be a programming challenge.