Webcam hacking has officially gone mainstream with yesterday's revelation that the new Miss Teen USA, Cassidy Wolf, was the victim of a "sextortion" plot in which someone slipped Remote Administration Tool (RAT) software onto her computer and used it to snap (apparently nude) pictures of Wolf in her room. "I wasn’t aware that somebody was watching me (on my webcam)," she told The Today Show. "The light (on the camera) didn’t even go on, so I had no idea."
Wolf said that the hacker tried to extort her, threatening to release the pictures publicly if she didn't follow his demands. The FBI has admitted that it is investigating the case and eventually said that it has identified a suspect.
The story itself isn't remarkable—indeed, earlier this year I documented an entire community of RAT users who gather to share tips and pictures of the "slaves" whose machines they have infected—but these kinds of sextortion plots have to date been covered largely in the tech press and in local papers. (Though GQ ran a fine story on sextortionist Luis Mijangos in early 2012 that's well worth a read). Wolf has now taken the story onto the morning TV talk shows, and her interviewers appear to be amazed that such hacks are even possible.
In doing interviews this week for my new book, The Internet Police, many of the questions have focused on sextortion and the use of RAT software. These hacks are such a profound privacy violation—accessing webcams, microphones, and stored files provides the attacker with almost unfettered access to one's private life, thoughts, documents, even conversations—that they routinely generate amazement in interlocutors. As one TV host put it after hearing Wolf's story this week, "Just—wow, that is creepy... Can you believe that?" Or, as a Jezebel writer put it today, "webcam hacking—WHICH I CANNOT BELIEVE IS A REAL THING OH MY GOD."
Wolf is even making sextortion and webcam hacking one of the centerpieces of her educational efforts as Miss Teen USA—certainly a first, and a good lesson for other teens to hear. RAT software has grown so powerful and so easy to use that its use has been surging; I heard this week by e-mail from someone who doesn't know how to remove an ex-boyfriend's RAT from her machine. Even national governments use such tools these days, since laptops now provide bugging capabilities almost unimaginable a generation ago.
So good for Wolf, who has refused to be silenced by her extortionist and who is taking on the topics of digital privacy and security, which are increasingly crucial to teens. Hopefully computer security improves over the next few years to the point where Wolf can remove the sticker she currently keeps over her laptop's webcam—but if it doesn't, at least more teens will be aware of just how dangerous a laptop can be.
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