You Know That Funny Feeling You Get When You’re Being Stared At?

Webcams give you a chance to stay in contact with people you care about, yet they can pose a great threat to your privacy. While almost everyone has heard about infamous keylogging, people are not aware that every device connected to their PC’s has the potential to be used for malicious logging.

Webcam loggers are the most dangerous types of loggers. They allow hackers to secretly connect to your web camera even when your webcam is not visibly activated. Yes, that’s right – your webcam LED-indicator might be turned off, but your camera can be still recording you. This threat has become more relevant nowadays, considering that web cameras are already built-in to every modern device.

“Slaves” – this is how hackers refer to the people who are unaware of being watched. Just think about all the information that could be gathered through your web camera. Someone can take pictures of you, record videos or even worse – livestream your daily family life without your knowledge. These are real things that are happening right now.

Basically every modern Trojan/RAT (Remote Access Tool) contains tools that allow keystroke logging, take screenshots of the display, record sound using microphone and stream webcam feed. The main source of advanced malware are suspicious sites offering free downloads of software, videos, music as well as torrent sites. Cracked software almost always contains malware. What people often forget is that even a legitimate website can be hacked – and the files which are expected to be clean, can be modified by hackers. It might takes days or even weeks for the website owners to realize that there was a breach.

While anti-virus software will always remain an essential part of any security solution, they can no longer be relied upon on their own. If a keylogger is not known to the anti-virus, then it will remain undetected. According to research available on the web, anti-virus software detects not more than 25% of actual malware. Sure, they may detect a well-known commercial keylogger or viruses, but malware developers are often highly skilled people and they are always one step ahead of antivirus companies.

The only way to truly protect yourself from zero-day threats is to use real time protection software which detects certain actions rather than malware signatures. SpyShelter Anti-Keylogger is capable of stopping keyloggers, webcam loggers, trojans and other malicious applications from hooking into your system by detecting specific behaviors.

About the author

Bogdan Siemienowicz is Brand Manager at SpyShelter. Follow SpyShelter: Twitter @SpyShelter and on Facebook.