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Macosxhints.com walks users through a simple security / privacy technique designed to take snapshots using your built-in iSight whenever invalid login attempts are logged. Can someone say poor boy Undercover alternative?

With the new MacBook Pro’s including built-in iSight cameras, I thought it would be useful to take an iSight snapshot of anyone trying to break into my laptop. This is done by tailing /var/log/asl.log for invalid login attempts (both at the login screen and screen saver). I have created an authsight program (1.5KB download) that provides a monitoring daemon which calls the camera after an invalid login attempt, and also includes a launchd manifest. An iSight command line tool named iSightCapture is also required.

I implemented this immediately out of sheer curiosity wondering if anyone in my household has ever attempted to login without permission. Similarly, MacRabbit’s Deskshade offers a simple utility which presents an immediate log of login attempts as soon as the screen lock is removed.