The movie is well written, directed, and the main character is grounded well, with solid acting from the actress. What really sets the movie apart is that it’s based on a true story, and webcam hacking is a practice with thousands of documented cases, according to the short film.

Without further ado, here’s the movie. Prepare for creepiness.

Webcam from ZBros Productions on Vimeo.

If you want to truly be shocked, just search for “webcam hacking” in your search engine of choice. It’s remarkable how easy it is to do, especially with the person being completely unaware. *shudders*

The feed comes courtesy of the National Park Service, and the organization states that several other impressive sights should visible, as well.  "This full-motion, live-streaming webcam is located near Old Faithful Geyser and brings online visitors views of several other geysers in the area," the agency reports.

"When geysers such as Beehive, Lion, or Giantess are erupting, the camera will be aimed at them and zoomed in for optimal viewing enjoyment," it explains.  Also, "When bison, elk, coyotes, or the occasional bear wander into the camera’s view, live video images will be transmitted."

There’s no word on how many ill-behaved children may make it in front of the camera, but seeing them will be a small price to pay, anyway.  On that note, a mention of Canon seems prudent – it’s listed as the clip’s author, and in case there is any sponsorship going on, we’d like to encourage its continuation and expansion.  Hat tip to Neil Saunders, as well.

Admittedly, it seems there’s often not much to see on the video feed, and the lens appears to be in need of a quick cleaning.  Still, the live view of Old Faithful is much better than a bit of off-white wall.

Yahoo Messenger Webcam Zero-Day Exposed

Security firm McAfee revealed today that hackers in China had been discussing a zero-day exploit available for Yahoo Messenger. McAfee confirmed the exploit existed, and notified Yahoo of their findings.

A malicious webcam invite can trigger a heap overflow in Yahoo Messenger. Heap overflows have been a very common exploit condition in all kinds of software over the years.

Until Yahoo provides a fix for the problem, McAfee recommended that Yahoo Messenger users avoid accepting webcam invites from untrusted sources until this flaw has been patched. For further security, those who can block outbound traffic on TCP port 5100 should do so while Yahoo bashes out a patch.

Yahoo’s Webcam function also suffered from a problem with its ActiveX Controls back in June 2007. This new problem being discussed in China is not related to the June issue, which has been patched, McAfee said in its post.

Not content to let Justin have all the fun, geek trailblazers Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo have been experimenting with Ustream. At one point today, I was watching Chris Pirillo’s webcam, which was broadcasting video of him watching Robert Scoble’s webcam, which was broadcasting video of him driving in the car. Fascinating stuff. About the only interesting part of the whole process was the discovery that a bunch of people seem to think Chris Pirillo’s new wife Latthanapon “Ponzi” Indharasophang is hot (and he agrees).

Is there such a thing as too much information? Twitter allows Scoble to update me and several thousand other people on his location every couple of minutes, and it’s the reason I know Jason Calacanis was in Barcelona. Thanks to Ustream, I know that Scoble was in the passenger seat on his drive with Maryam, and that it was raining — and I know that Chris Pirillo has two 21-inch (or possibly 30-inch) monitors on his desk.

What is the purpose of all this knowing? Who knows. As trivial as it all sounds — Chris calls it the “narcissystem,” which I think is pretty close to the mark — I did find it fascinating to listen to him describing how when he heard there was an earthquake, he got one of his Twitter followers in Acapulco to give him his Skype ID and interviewed him on the spot, with others conferenced in via a free teleconference service. Is this the future? Are we on our way to the metaverse?

Update:

Allan Stern at Centernetworks has some thoughts along the same lines, and so does Brian Solis. Jeremiah Owyang has more about the setup that Ustream did for both him and Scoble, which is similar to what Justin uses, and Rick Mahn makes an interesting point in Jeremiah’s comments: What if people had these rigs during the U.S. election campaign? Now that would be interesting. If I were Ustream CEO Chris Yeh, I would get together with Huffington Post and NewAssignment.net for their “crowdsourcing” Politics 2.0 experiment.

Interesting point from Jason at Webomatica, who says that “these real-time technologies rather seem like a step backwards to the days where you had to be at a certain place and time and pay attention or you missed it.”

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