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Is it unnecessary to cover one's webcam on Linux? (self.cybersecurity)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Kalcifer to c/cybersecurity

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cross-posted to: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15859253

From other conversations that I've read through, people usually say "Yes, because it's easy on Windows", or "Yes, because they simply don't trust the webcam". But neither of these arguments are enough for me. The former I feel is irrelevent when one is talking about Linux, and the latter is just doing something for the sake of doing it which is not exactly a rational argument.

Specifically for Linux (although, I suppose this partially also depends on the distro, and, of course, vulnerabilites in whatever software that you might be using), how vulnerable is the device to having its webcam exploited? If you trust the software that you have running on your computer, and you utilize firewalls (application layer, network layer, etc.), you should be resistant to such types of exploits, no? A parallel question would also be: How vulnerable is a Linux device if you don't take extra precautions like firewalls.

If this is the case, what makes Windows so much more vulnerable?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I probably wouldn't bother. I can think of two scenarios you might get spied on.

Through your browser you've granted a website access to your webcam (Zoom etc.) and left a tab open. Maybe it could activate it when you weren't expecting?
Someone has used a vulnerability to take control of your computer to the degree it can access your webcam directly. Desktop linux software doesn't usually have meaningful isolation between software running as the same user, so at this point they can grab all your data, passwords, take screenshots, etc. and the webcam is just the cherry on top.

I expect most people don't do (1) very often, let alone for sketchy websites, so IMO it doesn't make much difference either way.