Dell is working "privacy button" to disable microphone and camera in Linux

Dell unveiled recently through a mail in the Linux Kernel lists that starting next year, will provide hardware "privacy buttons" to disable microphone and camera support. In preparation for other Dell laptops with these buttons on the market, a Dell privacy driver is being prepared for the Linux kernel.

These new privacy buttons from Dell they are essentially hardware kill switches for transmitting audio from the microphone and video from the camera.

Dell's privacy driver sent by Perry Yuan (Dell's senior software engineer) to Linux kernel maintainers on Tuesday is all about manipulating the appropriate LEDs and tracking the status of hardware controls, while audio and support actual changes the video is handled by hardware.

In its current form, Dell Privacy Driver supports camera and microphone, but the patch also indicates a "PRIVACY_SCREEN_STATUS" bit. Presumably, Dell intends to extend this privacy driver to the administration of a privacy filter (this is a protection that is placed in front of a screen to restrict the view of the data that is shown on both sides of the screen other than the axis of vision), reminiscent of Lenovo's PrivacyGuard and the code for the privacy filter that Google is working on with Intel Chromebooks.

Perry Yuan states in his email:

 “Added support for Dell Privacy Driver for Dell Drive Hardware Privacy Layout, which protects user privacy of hardware camera and audio.

Once the camera or audio privacy mode is activated, no application will receive audio or video streams. When the user presses the hotkey ctrl + F4, the audio privacy mode is enabled and the hotkey to mute the camera is ctrl + F9 ”.

Basically, as soon as the new code is ready and is incorporated into the Linux kernel, no program will be able to access the audio or video transmissions, since the disconnection will be carried out at the hardware level.

Since this works at the operating system level, in addition to making crashes more difficult to perform, it should block spyware or other types of malware that try to catch a glimpse of it.

Such switches in hardware are basically nothing new and many manufacturers have offered or offered corresponding hardware in recent years.

Hardware specially designed for the Linux market, such as Purism's Librem laptops, is even explicitly advertised with switches of this type.

On Dell devices that have long been sold as Developer Editions with Linux distributions, such as the XPS-13 series, such switches are still missing.

The code that is now sent to the controller ensures that information about the status of the switches is transmitted through ACPI and that user space applications, for example, can receive information about it.

In addition, there is the control of the status LEDs on the actual devices. There is also an option for the so-called privacy screen in the code, but it is not yet used.

With so-called privacy screens, the software manipulates the video output or rendering on the screen in such a way that strangers should no longer be able to read.

In Windows, some commercial devices offer these functions through additional drivers. On Linux, the use has so far been limited to a few Thinkpads, for which the manufacturer Lenovo has created a corresponding driver.

Even Google is working on such a technique for future Dell Chromebooks.

Finally, if you are interested in knowing more about the note. You can check the mail sent in the Linux Kernel mailing lists in the following link.


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