The Webcam spy case in the Lower Merion School District near Philadelphia has raised concern as to whether others with Webcams are vulnerable to remote spying. The school district admitted to activating the Webcams 42 times during a 14-month period, claiming that it did so only to track lost or stolen laptops.
But for anyone with a Webcam (and Webcams are now built in to many laptops and desktops), the question is whether you are vulnerable to having your Webcam remotely turned on. The answer is yes, though the newest version of the software used by the district to monitor its computers can no longer be used to activate Webcams or even track stolen computers.
According to Harriton High School student Phil Hayes, officials at the Lower Merion School District used a program called LANRev to manage and track the Macintosh laptops issued to students. The product was published by Pole Position Software, which was acquired last year by Vancouver, B.C.-based Absolute Software. An Absolute Software spokesman verified that it is also his understanding that the school used LANRev software.
Even if a school doesn’t do anything wrong or ever use their software to connect to the laptop webcams, spyware certainly could do so. Let’s take this a step further. Say that a spyware programmer knows of a school that is giving laptops to their students. The students could be specifically targeted in addition to accidentally (or ignorantly) being infected with spyware. This puts the students at risk to outsiders even if the school is responsible.
Are these computers thoroughly protected from spyware? Even if the answer is yes, it is not absolute protection and children are still at risk to predators using spyware to activate their webcam. The only acceptable answer to this webcam concern is for there to not be webcams in the school-provided laptops. As for laptop theft recovery, there are other methods and softwares that do not require webcams.
Additionally, I agree with the cnet writer about the microphone. That is also a potential weakness and would require a physical on/off switch on the laptop to disable (“muting” can be undone via spyware code). It wasn’t that long ago, it seems, that the concern was the government listening to us via our cellphones since the microphone could be turned on remotely. I’m sure that concern will show up again in the future.
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