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Credit to Author: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai| Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 15:30:00 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Whenever you give iPhone apps permission to access your camera, the app can surreptitiously take pictures and videos of you as long as the app is in the foreground, a security researcher warned on Wednesday. <\/p>\n Felix Krause, who recently warned of the danger of malicious iPhone password popups<\/a>, wrote a blog post as a sort of PSA<\/a> for iPhone users. To be clear, this is not a bug, but likely intended behavior. <\/p>\n What this means is that even if you don’t see the camera “open” in the form of an on-screen viewfinder, an app can still take photos and videos. It is unknown how many apps currently do this, but Krause created a test app as a proof-of-concept.<\/p>\n This behavior is what enables certain “spy” apps like Stealth Cam<\/a> and Easy Calc – Camera Eye<\/a> to exist. But even if this behavior is well-known among iOS developers and hardcore users, it’s worth remembering that all apps that have camera permission can technically take photos in this way. <\/p>\n “It’s something most people have no idea about, as they think the camera is only being used if they see the camera content or a LED is blinking,” Krause told Motherboard in a chat over Twitter direct message. Krause currently works at Google, but performed and published this research independently of his work there.<\/p>\n Read more: <\/b> Turning Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in iOS 11’s Control Center Doesn’t Actually Turn Off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n What’s worse is that, unlike on Mac computers\u2014which show a solid green light when the camera is active\u2014the iPhone has no mechanism to indicate to a user that the camera is on. <\/p>\n “You can get full access to both cameras without indicating that to the user,” Krause told me.<\/p>\n To test this functionality, Krause created a custom app called “watch.user”<\/a> and shared it with me. I installed it on my iPhone and verified that, indeed, the app took pictures of me while I was simply scrolling through it, and it was even running a hidden facial recognition engine.<\/p>\n