> Every laptop Apple has manufactured in the last ten years has an LED connected to the same circuit which powers up the camera.
At the very least, I need a citation or an official statement. Because clearly, this has not always been the case [1]:
We describe how to disable the LED on a class of Apple internal iSight webcams used in some versions of MacBook laptops and iMac desktops.
[..] our investigation of the iSight revealed that it is designed around a microprocessor and a separate image sensor with an indicator LED sitting between them such that whenever the image sensor is transmitting images to the microcontroller, a hardware interlock illuminates the LED. We show how to reprogram the microcontroller with arbitrary, new firmware. This in turn enables us to reconfigure the image sensor, allowing us to bypass the hardware interlock and disable the LED.
[..] iSight webcam [was] found in previous generation Apple products including the iMac G5 and early Intel-based iMacs,MacBooks, and MacBook Pros until roughly 2008
Whatever reason Apple had to design the camera system this way back in 2008, is probably still a valid reason (cost, hardware simplicity, spacial constraints etc.). It means Apple and others have incentives to build camera systems that are easier to compromise. It's enough for me to worry.
So is trust. You can’t possibly audit the source of every piece of software that touches your life, even if all of it were open source. Hell, things like Heartbleed or Shellshock sat in OpenSSL / Bash for 5-10 years.
If you don't trust an open-source program due to the possibility of e.g. Heartbleed, then it's only reasonable to trust closed-source software (e.g. the majority of macOS, including in all likelihood the parts of it controlling the camera) even less.
At the very least, I need a citation or an official statement. Because clearly, this has not always been the case [1]:
We describe how to disable the LED on a class of Apple internal iSight webcams used in some versions of MacBook laptops and iMac desktops.
[..] our investigation of the iSight revealed that it is designed around a microprocessor and a separate image sensor with an indicator LED sitting between them such that whenever the image sensor is transmitting images to the microcontroller, a hardware interlock illuminates the LED. We show how to reprogram the microcontroller with arbitrary, new firmware. This in turn enables us to reconfigure the image sensor, allowing us to bypass the hardware interlock and disable the LED.
[..] iSight webcam [was] found in previous generation Apple products including the iMac G5 and early Intel-based iMacs,MacBooks, and MacBook Pros until roughly 2008
Whatever reason Apple had to design the camera system this way back in 2008, is probably still a valid reason (cost, hardware simplicity, spacial constraints etc.). It means Apple and others have incentives to build camera systems that are easier to compromise. It's enough for me to worry.
[1] https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...