Bug 29579

Description of problem:
I have an HP Probook 6550b with an internal microphone. Not wanting to use it, for security purposes I disabled the microphone in the BIOS. However, I recently became aware that pulseaudio is showing the microphone as if it were adjustable.

If I run a Mageia guest in VirtualBox 6.1.28, an icon in the M8 host's systray indicates that VirtualBox is accessing the microphone, even though "audio input" is not enabled in the guest's settings. It does not do this with a Windows 7 guest, even if the "audio input" setting is enabled.

If I look at the volume control settings, there is one there for the microphone, and it indicates it can be adjusted to anywhere from 0% to 150%, or it can be muted, just as if it were enabled in the BIOS.

I do not know if this issue is hardware-specific to HP Probooks, as I don't have another machine with an internal microphone.

On the face of it, this looks like a dangerous security problem, like the microphone can't be disabled by the user. But, after trying to make audio recordings with a couple of apps and getting only silence, I tend to think the problem is more cosmetic than dangerous. But it certainly looks bad.