How to help prevent camera hacking: Best practices for remote workers

The webcams in our laptops, tablets, desktops and phones have become as critical digital tools as video calls and video conference calls are routine, whether working in the office, catching up from home or traveling.

With a high volume of video conference calls, do you know how to help prevent someone from hacking your camera? Do you know how to help prevent laptop camera hacking and how to help prevent phone camera hacking? If webcams aren’t secured, they’re readily accessible to anyone—even bad actors intent on compromising systems and stealing data.

Organizations are more susceptible than ever to camera hacking (also called camfecting), thanks to the increased reliance on video conferencing apps. However, by following a few best practices to help prevent someone from hacking your camera, the threat can be managed to help address remote work security.
 

What is camera hacking?

Camera hacking is exactly what it sounds like: it’s when a hacker accesses and activates a webcam without the owner’s permission and uses it to spy on whatever’s within the webcam’s field of vision—including the webcam owner. Hackers usually turn off webcam lights to stay undetected.

When figuring out how to help prevent someone from hacking your camera, you must first understand how attackers can hijack a webcam. If you’re looking for solutions on how to help prevent laptop or phone camera hacking, it doesn’t matter whether the camera is a standalone unit or is built into a laptop or a mobile device. The risks are manifold:

• Remote-access Trojan malware can hide inside a legitimate-looking mobile application or be delivered through phishing emails, texts or social media messages. If it is clicked and opened, the covert download can grant a hacker complete remote access to a camera.
• Unprotected webcams, or those protected with only factory-default passwords, are easily detected by attackers.
• Home Wi-Fi routers that are not secure are also easy targets. Once attackers have access to the home router, they could move laterally to hijack user webcams.
• Video conferencing apps are also a potential entryway.
   

Common methods hackers use to access webcams

Hackers can access your webcam by exploiting weaknesses in several ways such as:

• Out-of-date software. Keep your software and anti-virus programs updated to ensure they have the latest security patches.
• Public Wi-Fi. Unsecured networks may not have firewalls and may be easily targeted.
• Phishing. Malicious emails can activate malware or viruses that can compromise your wireless network security.
   

Camera hacking: How to detect if your webcam has been hacked

There are several ways to check if your webcam has been hacked. Look for things like:

• Unusual camera activity, such as your webcam indicator light turning on unexpectedly, or unknown apps accessing the camera.
• Strange files that you don’t recognize are stored on your devices, such as videos that you didn’t record.
• Browser extensions that you don’t remember adding. Delete any that you do not recognize.
• Your battery draining faster than usual, which could be due to malicious apps running in the background.
   

Help keep your webcam and other devices protected by running regular malware scans and keeping your security software up-to-date. Above all, stay vigilant and be on the alert for new or unexpected activities on your devices.
 

What’s the potential impact of webcam hacking?

Organizations are most at risk of targeted attacks on specific employees. By hijacking webcam feeds, hackers can potentially eavesdrop on sensitive meetings, exposing your organization to the risk of corporate espionage or insider trading.

Other risks associated with camfecting include burglary or theft from physical offices—although this is more likely to stem from the hacking of security cameras in office buildings—as well as extortion and spying of employees caught on camera at home. Extortion and spying is the most common of these scenarios, but targeted attacks on corporate cameras for espionage purposes are more covert—and often more effective.
 

Remote work security: How to prevent camera hacking

When looking at how to help prevent laptop camera hacking and how to help prevent phone camera hacking, you can consider the low-cost and obvious option of putting a strip of dark tape over the camera if there is not a built-in webcam cover. However, given how often a user would have to remove it and reapply it, this technique may not be feasible. Instead, the focus should be on securing wireless devices as effectively as possible with mobile device management tools and training users to be more cautious.

Following are some more effective solutions for how to help prevent someone from hacking your camera. Secure computers, laptops, tablets and phones by ensuring that:

• Employee devices are equipped with up-to-date antivirus software and malware protection as well as running the latest versions of operating systems and software;
• Remote workers protect home Wi-Fi networks and webcams with strong unique passwords, by switching on WPA2 security and disabling universal plug-and-play;
• Zero-trust policies and solutions are implemented;
• Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions are implemented to keep employees productive with security tools that help protect your data.
• Improve staff training and awareness with tips on:
• Locating webcam videos stored on their hard drive
• Changing the security settings in their webcam apps
• Avoiding the use of public Wi-Fi
   

In today’s age of remote work, it’s important to understand how to help prevent someone from hacking your camera, including how to help prevent laptop camera hacking and how to help prevent phone camera hacking. Learn about tools to help strengthen remote work security and prevent someone from hacking your remote workforce with Verizon’s Mobile Device Management and other security solutions.

The author of this content is a paid contributor for Verizon.