Someone could be watching you through your webcam, without you even realising.

We don’t mean to unduly alarm you, but unsecured cameras on your computer could provide a malicious hacker with a direct window into your life.

And once they’ve watched you for long enough, chances are they’ll try their luck blackmailing you with something they’ve seen.


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So how can you tell if your camera has been compromised? And what can you do to protect yourself?

James Scott, senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology in the US, recently published a paper called: ‘America Exposed: Who’s Watching You Through Your Computer’s Camera?’



He told Metro.co.uk that it’s surprisingly easy for hackers to take over your camera – or that sometimes, the malware could be installed before you even buy your computer.

‘Webcams can be easily compromised by even inexperienced and unsophisticated adversaries if the model of a webcam is inherently vulnerable due to a lack of security-by-design,’ he said.

‘Or, if it is intentionally made vulnerable during production as part of an adversarial nation-state campaign, or if the consumer practices poor cyber-hygiene and Information Security.’

How can you tell if someone’s watching you?

As easy as it is for someone to hack, it’s a bit harder to spot when you’re the one being targeted.

Scott, however, said that a major clue is if the little LED light next to your camera is on, even when you’re not using it.

‘The most obvious indication that a webcam has been hacked is the activation of the indicator light,’ he said.

‘However, this signal can easily be disabled by even an unsophisticated attacker.

‘More technical indicators that are more difficult to obfuscate include the transmission of audio or video traffic from the device, the presence of running webcam processes and services, audio and video storage files and logs.’

They could be watching you innocently going about your business (Picture: PA)

What do you do if you’ve been compromised?

Cleaning your devices up when they’ve been compromised is even trickier – but it’s do-able.

The first thing Scott says you should do is immediately cover your camera with a plaster or something, so the perpetrators can’t watch you anymore.

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Then – and it gets a tad more complicated – you need to temporarily set up firewall rules to block audio and video traffic.

You should then uninstall your webcam drivers, and run a complete scan of all of your drives using reputable anti-virus and anti-malware software (Malware Bytes is pretty decent).

Once you’ve done this, and you’ve rid your computer of any malware lurking about, you can reinstall the drivers and disable the firewall rule.

How can I avoid this happening to me?

Fortunately, there are ways you can avoid going through this whole ordeal in the first place. Prevention is better than cure, after all.

First things first – cover your cameras when you’re not using them. You can either use plasters, or you can buy small webcam covers that can slide open and shut online.



If you’re worried that covering your webcam will make you look a bit tin-foil-hattish, just remember that Mark Zuckerberg and Edward Snowden both cover their cameras.

As well as blocking off the cam, Scott recommends a number of other things you should get in the habit of doing as best practice.

He says you should ‘regularly update and patch devices, drivers and applications’ to make sure you’re protecting your device.

But you also need to ‘protect your system with a reliable layered security’ that includes the following:

A whitelisted firewall

Anti-malware applications from a reputable vendor

Anti-autorun safeguards

Tight administration controls that segment privileges away from active accounts

Spam and phishing detectors

And on top of that, Scott says you should regularly Google your webcam manufacturer and computer type, in order to check for any active vulnerabilities.