IT News

Spies may be controlling your web cam

DENVER - Web cameras make it easy to keep in touch with far away friends and family. If you have a web cam on your home computer, laptop or even your cell phone, a hacker can be lurking, just waiting for a chance to gain control.

Right now, hackers are spying on innocent users via their web cam and microphones. It starts with a simple email, link or program sent to you.

"The bad guys go out there and find vulnerabilities in different applications and programs," says Michael Gregg, COO of Superior Solutions Inc.

Once you click on it, your computer is overrun by the hacker's program.

"When the hackers find a problem before its fixed, its called a Zero-Day or IE-Exploit," says Gregg.

The exploit programs can remotely turn on your web cam, watch what you're looking at online; even listen to what you are saying. Even worse, the longer these programs are available to hackers, the easier they are to use.

"Anyone with very little technical stills or knowledge can actually launch these attacks," adds Gregg.

Charles Tendell is a certified ethical hacker. He set up two laptops to explain how it works. One is the "victim" computer, the other is the "spy." The two computers look identical, but as I type on the "victim" PC, every key I type and every word I say is picked up by the "spy."

"I can capture audio, I can capture web cams and I can capture the screen of what they are looking at," says Tendell.

It's like a door left open for hackers. And it's all available via loopholes in Microsoft's program and Internet Explorer. Experts say most PC users don't even know this type of hack exists.

"It's kind of crazy what people can do and how simple it seems to be to do that," says web cam user Mark Ventura.

Network security web cameras are a popular way for people to keep an eye on their home and business when they are away.

"What people don't realize, if those devices are a network device someone can very easily search for them on the web," adds Tendell.

All a hacker needs to know is the type of camera you are using, do a special "inurl" search, and your unprotected web cam image is available for anyone to see - web cams on business, backyards, even baby rooms.

It's a loophole in security that may never be fixed.

"It's the one element of computer security that no one will ever be able to close that's the human element," Tendell says.

I asked Microsoft to comment on the issue of web cam spies, but they did not have an answer.

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