Peeping Tom tricked women into taking hacked webcams into shower, claim police

The problem of perverts and cyberstalkers using malware to grab control over female victims’ webcams is one that has been around for quite some time.

Hackers can secretly spy upon people in their bedrooms, and even exploit technology to blackmail young women into posing naked, threatening that they will send other compromising photos to their online friends.

It’s pretty unsavoury stuff, and has probably made some women cautious of handing over their computers to that ever-so-friendly repair man, fearful of what they might install while the computer is in their care.

In the latest case, a 20-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly infecting young women’s Apple Mac computers with spyware that could commandeer their webcam.

Trevor Harwell, of Orange County, California, is said to…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.