Oh, hey, can I scare you by telling you about a browser vulnerability you can’t do much about?
It’s been dubbed “clickjacking”, presumably because that term sounds catchy. In short, someone makes you click on something you didn’t expect. An example might be trying to click a button, but the clickjacker has created an invisible area on top of the button which is clicked instead.
Then, so reports say, the hacker might be able and willing to hijack your microphone and webcam.
How to defend yourself? At this point, you can switch to the Lynx browser (which is text-only). Disabling plug-ins (Flash, Java, etc.) and Javascript support also help. Note that both these measures cripple your web-browsing experience. (I personally am not bothering.)
And, despite the post’s title, the employees of LEP are not interested in making you a target for this attack. Considering the demographic, we’re just not that eager to sneak a peak off your webcam.
If someone wants to watch me blankly staring at my screen they can have at it. I don’t usually talk to my computer. Maybe an expletive here and there.
Actually, I was talking to my Russian friend, who’s involved in “warez”, “torrentz”, and “pr0n”. He said that pictures of men in their late 60’s staring at their computers are very popular, and he nets a cool $500K/year selling them.
Premium are the ones where their moms walk in and bust them pulling beef jerky.
Chron.com pulls a similar trick – Flash ads over front page and on selected articles. I saw a Macy’s coupon float over then disappear. Hover article links and the underline does not appear. if I click, a new page opens to macys.com.
It’s annoying, but refreshing the page fixes it.