heavenly-created

[heavenly-created]

do you actually believe in that optic nerve sh*t??

hi, optic nerve was a leaked program that was proven from multiple sources from both the uk and the u.s. The story was broken by The Guardian in February 2014, and is based on leaked documents dating to between 2008 and 2012.

If you want some more info- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optic_Nerve_(GCHQ)#:~:text=Optic%20Nerve%20as%20described%20in,comply%20with%20human%20rights%20legislation.&text=The%20story%20was%20broken%20by,between%202008%20and%202012.%20Yahoo!

[heavenly-created]

𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐜𝐲?

National Security, is it an excuse to snoop on our private information? Or is it actually protecting our borders from threats. These few years, it’s a very common action to cover up our laptop cameras in fear, that someone is watching us.

James Scott, senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology told Metro.co.uk that it’s surprisingly easy for hackers to take over your camera – or that sometimes, the malware could be installed before you even buy your computer.

So, I’m taking a wild guess you have one or more of these apps: WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Viber and if not, have you been living under a rock all your life? But did you know when the user grants an app access to their camera and microphone, the app could do the following:

• Access both the front and the back camera.

• Record you at any time the app is in the foreground.

• Take pictures and videos without telling you.

• Upload the pictures and videos without telling you.

• Upload the pictures/videos it takes immediately.

• Run real-time face recognition to detect facial features or expressions.

• Livestream the camera on to the internet.

• Detect if the user is on their phone alone, or watching together with a second person.

• Upload random frames of the video stream to your web service and run a proper face recognition software which can find existing photos of you on the internet and create a 3D model based on your face.

So, as I’m sure you can agree, this an exceptionally serious matter. Where can I prove all these ‘allegations’? And so next we come to the famous scandal- Optic Nerve.

Edward Snowden revealed an GCHQ and NSA program called Optic Nerve. The operation was a bulk surveillance program under which they captured webcam images every five minutes from Yahoo users’ video chats and then stored them for future use. It is estimated that between 3% and 11% of the images captured contained “undesirable nudity”.

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ -Government Communications Headquarters,, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Government security agencies like the GCHQ can also have access to your devices through in-built backdoors. This means that these security agencies can tune in to your phone calls, read your messages,

capture pictures of you, stream videos of you, read your emails, steal your files at any moment they please.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

The documents also chronicle GCHQ's sustained struggle to keep the large store of sexually explicit imagery collected by Optic Nerve away from the eyes of its staff, though there is little discussion about the privacy implications of storing this material in the first place.

So yes. The government (US and UK) if they truly wanted to could access all of your private videos, pictures and information to their own database. But why worry? Unless, you’re hiding something, I wouldn't see a reason to fret… Invasion of privacy.

It may be amusing to imagine a poor FBI agent watching you sing along to music videos and cry over Netflix but we have over 66.5 million people in the UK and barely a thousand Government Communications Headquarters agents. Unless you are an immediate threat to the country, I doubt they will even think about you.

The real worry for all of us is harmful malware, take for example an application called Metasploit on the hacking platform Kali uses an Adobe Reader (which over 60% of users still use) exploit to open a listener on the user’s computer. You alter the PDF with the program, send the user the malicious file, they open it, and hey presto – you have total control over their device remotely.

Once a user opens this PDF file, the hacker can then:

1. Install whatever software/app they like on the user’s device.

2. Use a keylogger to grab all of their passwords.

3. Steal all documents from the device.

4. Take pictures and stream videos from their camera.

5. Capture past or live audio from the microphone.

6. Upload incriminating images/documents to their PC, and notify the police.

Internet safety is a vital thing to acknowledge if you don’t want your gadgets accessed by hackers and even the government too! If this blog page achieves anything, I hope it teaches you digital mindfulness. This is the act of being careful on the internet and taking precautionary measures to save yourself pain and potential ruin in the future, all because you didn’t install an antivirus or put a little bit of tape over your camera.

When an application asks for permission don't just absent- mindedly click it. Does twitter actually need your microphone?

Does anyone else have problems with their microphone on twitter?

Please, please stay safe and mindful of the dangers of the internet

xoxo- tb