slug: how-to-disable-webcam-in-linux datepublished: 2018-06-02T18:08:45 dateupdated: 2018-06-02T18:12:31 tags: Tech Ideas –-

By the silly block on Amazon

People nowadays are paranoid more or less –- more if you're a Linux user. Luckily it's really easy to disable web cam on a kernel module level. If

lsmod | grep uvcvideo

gives you some entries, you are good just to disable uvcvideo by:

sudo modprobe -r uvcvideo

Where r stands for remove. On the other hand, if you want to make this permanent:

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf ##add a line blacklist uvcvideo

This will instruct the kernel to unload the module that is being used to drive the web cam, which means that unless attacker has root privilege, you're fine. (I don't see why they would record a video of you if they have root access).

When you do so, if you want temporarily enable the module, you can ask modprobe to do so:

sudo modprobe uvcvideo