You know what they say… it's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you!
For years, webcams have been a somewhat common feature in most households. But the proliferation of laptops with built in webcams in the last few years has meant that virtually everyone with a somewhat recent laptop has a webcam pointing at them. I have one myself. It's staring at me right now… or it would be, if I hadn't covered it with a Post-It note after reading this terrifying article at Ars Technica.
I should back up and start by saying that Ars Technica is one of the most well-respected sources of journalism in the tech world. Unless you are involved in tech stuff, you likely have never heard of Ars Technica. Suffice it to say that what the Wall Street Journal is to the financial world, Ars Technica is to the technology world.
It's important to clarify the source because frankly if I had read this story anywhere else, I would have blown it off as lurid scaremongering of the worst kind. But coming from Ars Technica, I'm convinced that this is a real thing that is really happening.
It doesn't take a master-level hacker (or cracker, if you prefer the "correct" terminology) to take command of your webcam. All it takes is the ability to download and install a software program called RAT (for Remote Access Technology). This is as easy as it sounds. Then all you have to do is trick your victim into clicking a link to download the infected file, and boom: you're in.
The people who boast about their collections of people they spy on refer them to their "slaves." The term speaks to both the power differential, and the unwitting nature of the victims. It is also about some of the other hijinks they get up to, such as deleting files, stealing private files, and making your computer behave strangely (such as repeatedly ejecting the CDROM tray) as a prank.
Webcams are extremely vulnerable to this sort of thing. A court recently ruled that schools have the right to spy on people using school laptops, through the laptop's webcam. And a furniture rental store was recently caught spying on people who rented PCs with webcams.
The best protection against becoming a RAT victim is to never click a suspicious link, and to run a reputable virus scanning program which you keep scrupulously up to date. Malwarebytes has a free version which is very good at catching this sort of thing.