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On 06/03/11 15:13, RichD so wittily quipped:
> There was a recent news item, an Apple Mac was
> stolen.  He had anti-theft software installed, which
> snapped pictures at regular intervals through the webcam.
>
> Then it said he activated the program remotely,
> to send him the pictures, and the thief was eventually
> caught.
>
> My question is, how the heck did he accomplish this
> 'remote control'?  Like,  he sent a virus to the machine,
> or what?

one method might be vnc.  Other methods might be commercial (a couple of 
applications come to mind, advertised on the radio and TV).  If your 
computer is set up to 'phone home' whenever it's connected to the 
internet, this would be even easier, since you would instantly know when 
it's online, and what the IP address is.  Apple's shell and utility 
environment is based on FreeBSD 5.x and is basically the same as linux 
or newer releases of BSD or UNIX.  As such, you could easily set up an 
ssh daemon or PPPoE or some other virtual networking method that would 
give you access whenever it's online.  Once you have access to the 
machine, if you're a computer-savvy hacker type it should be a 
no-brainer to make it take photos, report its location via GPS (assuming 
you have hardware for this), and so on.