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Hackers Are Sneaking Into Women's Webcams and Posting the Footage on YouTube

A reminder of the risks women and girls face online.

Here's more evidence that you're not a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist if you cover your webcam with a post-it note.

According to a new report by digital rights group Digital Citizens Alliance, hackers are hijacking the webcams of women and girls and uploading the intimate footage to YouTube for profit.

The report, which was released at the Black Hat conference, describes how hackers known as "ratters" use a special kind of malware called a remote access trojan, or RAT, to gain access to a victim's computer and control their webcams. Trojans account for 70 percent of all malware online today, and the easiest to use are RATs, the report states.

After gaining enough intimate footage, ratters upload the webcam capture to YouTube and watch as the likes and views pour in. A video of a young woman in front of her computer, presumably oblivious to the ratter's surveillance, can rack up hundreds of thousands of views—and the associated ad revenue.

This kind of activity is nothing new, unfortunately, although the Digital Citizens Alliance's report is comprehensive. In 2013, a hacker by the name of Jared James Abraham was sentenced to federal prison for trying to extort Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf with webcam footage he obtained with RAT malware.

The Digital Citizens Alliance recommends that Google take a more active role in seeking out and removing stolen webcam videos on YouTube. But, more importantly, the report underscores yet again the very real risks that women and girls face online.