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> The Dell privacy driver sent out on Tuesday for the Linux kernel is about manipulating the relevant LEDs and tracking the status of the hardware-based controls where as the actual toggling of the audio/video support is handled by the hardware.

This is incorrectly designed: the LEDs must be hardware-driven, not software driven. Otherwise malicious software could turn off the LED when the camera and microphone are running.

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> the actual toggling of the audio/video support is handled by the hardware.

It's right in the line you quoted.

But the LED indicating the state isn’t. That’s a problem. All you really need to do is make the LED a liar and the user has no idea if their mic is on or not.

Yeah, that's not a good scenario. But they could also just check the physical switch, which cannot lie.

I think that you (and others!) must have misread: I did not write that malicious software would turn on the hardware — I wrote that it 'could turn off the LED when the camera and microphone are running.'

What I mean is that a user could leave the hardware switches in the microphone- or camera-on positions, but malicious software could turn off the LEDs, so that the user would think he had privacy but in fact did not.

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