When my main job keeps me exceptionally busy, I don’t have time to react to the tech’s topic du jour as quickly as others do. So I try to take a few notes and publish my views when I can.

I’m sure most of you will have read Joanna Stern’s piece for the Wall Street Journal about webcam security, What I Learned From the Hacker Who Spied on Me. [If this link doesn’t send you to the full version of the article and you hit the WSJ paywall, just google the exact article title and click the search result link.]

While I’m all for giving security advice, especially to non-tech users, and while I certainly agree with most of the tips Stern provides in her article, I’m also in full agreement with John Gruber: in both the Windows and Mac scenarios, the hacker was considerably helped by a series of intentionally careless steps Stern performed to lower the built-in security of her machines.

Gruber’s commentary here is spot-on:

Stern also claims she’s now using a physical stick-on camera cover. But why? In both cases — Mac and PC — the built-in system software did its job and issued clear warnings that she had to ignore for the attack to proceed. And even then — on both Mac and PC — the light next to the camera went on when it was in use.

There’s nothing in Stern’s story that makes me worry in the least bit about the security of my Mac webcams, and I don’t see anything that should worry someone running Windows 10 with Windows Defender (Microsoft’s built-in security software). The path to compromising Stern’s cameras was like a test of your home security that starts with a request that you leave your door unlocked and turn off your alarm system.

I have never understood the mass paranoia over laptop webcams — which have in-use indicator lights, which I’ve seen no evidence can be circumvented on Macs from the last decade — and the complete lack of similar paranoia over microphones, which cannot be blocked by a piece of tape and which have no in-use indicator lights. And I don’t see anyone taping over the cameras on their phones. This story is only going to feed that paranoia, because the takeaway is going to be “The Wall Street Journal says you should cover up your webcam.”

Apologies for the extended quote, but this is exactly, exactly the point I would have made even before reading Gruber’s take. And, like him, I don’t cover my webcams either. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the underlying issue of an attacker having remote access to my webcams and microphones (the latter for me is a more serious concern than the former, actually). So I installed a very nice, very unobtrusive utility called OverSight written by Patrick Wardle. As the exhaustive webpage informs, OverSight monitors a Mac’s mic and webcam, alerting the user when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses the webcam.

I recommend it. It’s a more elegant and effective solution than taping your webcams, and it monitors the internal microphone’s status as well. The app is free but you can support Wardle on Patreon.