Cross-posted to: https://sh.itjust.works/post/15859195
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?
This question really begs the point that cam and mic need kill switches that physically disconnect these things with a simple switch.
One of you go make a wall mounted light switch thing with a red LED for Workstations and sell it – I could see this becoming standard.
Laptop world is going to take more inroads from slacker hackers scratching their own itch.