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Im curious how the Meterpreter can take pictures from my webcam without turning on the webcam LED? Ive read that you have to write/change a driver, or a firmware, or you just change some DLLs, but then others say that the LED cant be hacked because then the webcam gets power the LED gets powered too but this is already for me false since the meterpreter can already do this. And i doubt that Rapid7 wrote dozens of firmwares to disable every single LED from every single Webcam, they did something brilliant, so brilliant that it works cross-platform. So what did they to achieve something like this?

EDIT

Here's my webcam 

*-usb:1
                   Description: Video
                   Product: Lenovo EasyCamera
                   Vendor: Vimicro corp.
                   Physical ID: 5
                   Bus-Informations: usb@3:5
                   Version: 14.76
                   Capabilities: usb-2.00
                   Configuration: driver=uvcvideo maxpower=256mA speed=480Mbit/s

And here's the corresponding modinfo of "uvcvideo" (didnt included are "alias"es)

filename:       /lib/modules/4.15.0-43-generic/kernel/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvcvideo.ko
version:        1.1.1
license:        GPL
description:    USB Video Class driver
author:         Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
srcversion:     DBA8F055BDC0120170B3498
depends:        videodev,videobuf2-core,videobuf2-v4l2,videobuf2-vmalloc,media
retpoline:      Y
intree:         Y
name:           uvcvideo
vermagic:       4.15.0-43-generic SMP mod_unload 
signat:         PKCS#7
signer:         
sig_key:        
sig_hashalgo:   md4
parm:           clock:Video buffers timestamp clock
parm:           hwtimestamps:Use hardware timestamps (uint)
parm:           nodrop:Don't drop incomplete frames (uint)
parm:           quirks:Forced device quirks (uint)
parm:           trace:Trace level bitmask (uint)
parm:           timeout:Streaming control requests timeout (uint)

EDIT

I found a tool called "uvcdynctrl" it allows you to alter some things from a webcam but then I dump available controls of my webcam

sudo uvcdynctrl -c

Listing available controls for device video0:
      Brightness
      Contrast
      Saturation
      Hue
      White Balance Temperature, Auto
      Gamma
      Power Line Frequency
      White Balance Temperature
      Sharpness
      Exposure, Auto Priority
      Pan (Absolute)
      Tilt (Absolute)
      Zoom, Absolute

nothing shows up what could turn off my LED..

tester
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  • which platforms / webcam vendor and versions have you seen this result on? I agree with you that they did not include dozens of firmwares in Metasploit but maybe they have something that works in certain cases. I did a search of their source code but found nothing about LED lights. – mcgyver5 Jan 24 '19 at 00:04
  • Only on my Laptop and my brothers (but basicly they are the same), the name would be "Lenovo EasyCamera" and that sounds like it would be the part of the "certain cases", I was digging in their repo too but didnt found something either. forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-B-and-G-Series-Notebooks/… someone says that it is possible to change it inside the registry, but since im on linux that wouldnt do much (or does linux have something like regedit?) – tester Jan 24 '19 at 02:29
  • It depends on the manufacturer of webcam. Some webcams cannot be turned on without powering the LED. LED is hardwired and it turns on before the camera starts. Some webcams have feature to turn off LED either by the software or by a hack around. – defalt Jan 24 '19 at 03:46
  • But why isn't this a standard? For me it would be easier to hardwire a LED to a webcam rather than writing a firmware plus the driver for that(or they try to reduce 'unnecessary' space). My Laptop had its release year back in 2014, did they changed it on the newer ones or did just the old laptops had hardwired LED's? – tester Jan 24 '19 at 12:04

0 Answers0