Arguably a much, much bigger problem are the (many) microphones of modern devices.
These usually get neither an LED nor a switch, and unlike cameras can't easily be covered, nor pointed away from potentially sensitive topics/subjects.
And having a microphone in the same chassis as the keyboard would make creating a keylogger easier. A microphone in the same room as the keyboard can be made into a keylogger[1].
At the same time we're at a point where synthesizing your voice is getting more trivial everyday, you need only a few seconds of it and you can be made to say whatever someone wants.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean they learn everything I said: Passwords, personal details etc.
Also, getting a voice sample in the first place gets significantly easier that way: Not everybody publishes video or audio recordings of themselves online.
> Passwords
Which reminds me, to strengthen your point, it doesn't have 100% keystroke recognition, but there are works[1] on keylogging via audio, and 93% via Zoom-quality audio streams is concerning enough for me.
>These usually get neither an LED nor a switch
Lots of ThinkPads have «Microphone is muted» LED. Not exactly what's requested (and is bound to a software mute/unmute shortcut), but it's better than nothing regarding state of machine being observable with a quick glance.
That one seems to be software controlled. I'm fairly sure I remember having the mic working with the mute LED lit, which was confusing. That was on a x1 carbon gen9.
Correct, its usefulness depends on software working as expected (and not being tampered with)
echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/leds/platform\:\:micmute/brightness
No amount of microphones will ever be a bigger problem than a single compromising photo or video.
Then you're lacking fantasy.
For example, I'd not be happy having my voice auto-transcribed by some malware as I authenticate to my bank providing my SSN etc (which as an authentication method is of course horribly insecure, but that's a different discussion).
Of course, this will vary from person to person, but as mentioned above, just being able to mechanically cover a camera when required makes it less of an issue for me.
I'm with you. I can recover from nudes of me being on the Internet. That night even help me filter out friends that aren't really friends.
If someone drains my accounts, I'm definitely screwed.
I can’t think of much if anything which would be a compromising photo or video from my laptop, but conversations certainly are.
A photo may be merely embarrassing. You could get a lot of immediately useful information hearing my phone calls though.
I am dying for a compromising photo/video leak - I’ll finally be able to convince my wife to start OF channel :)