Article #1, 2nd Bimester.

How hackers can switch on your webcam and control your computer A malicious virus known as Remote Administration Tools (RATs) can be used by hackers to switch on your webcam and control the machine without your knowledge. The 14-year-old couldn't believe his eyes. The virtual currency he'd worked so hard to amass in the online role-playing game Runescape had vanished. He'd lost the equivalent of $700 in the blink of an eye, after investing his pocket money into the game's economy for months. All that remained was an instant message dialogue box: "Haha, you got RATted!" Runescape users, web cam users, and laptop owners are the key stakeholders as well as the IT systems involved. This “rating” problem is related with privacy and anonymity because the hackers can access to webcams from laptop users and can see anything personal that you are doing in front of your laptop. It’s also related with security because these hackers are stealing money from reunescape users. They are messing with everybody’s intellectual property, specially the one from runescapes developers. It’s making an economic impact because runescape users are losing the money that they paid in order to play this online game. It’s also a legal impact because it’s not legal to steal money and to spy people by their webcams. The impact is really serious because almost every computer comes with a web cam and many runescape users spend a lot of their money on this online platform. The stakeholders involved are a very large group. Many people use webcams. This is going to face future problems if it’s not solved quickly. The responsible for this is the group of “RAT” hackers. As a consequence many people will probably stop buying computers with webcams as well as many people will stop spending money on online gaming platforms. As a solution I will suggest runescape developers to act quickly if they don’t want to lose a large part of their users. I cant see a solution on the webcams.