The historical origins of soft cam type software is unclear, but image sensor emulation may have been used by the US and USSR space programs as part of camera integration on spacecraft.
In the modern era, physical teleconferencing systems (as opposed to ones dependent on a personal computer) may have been tested with soft cam technology in the late 1980s.
In the field of computer security, camfecting is the process of attempting to hack into a person's webcam and activate it without the owner's permission.
Camfecting is most often carried out by infecting the victim's computer with a virus that can provide the hacker access to the webcam.
This attack is specifically targeted at the victim's webcam, and hence the name camfecting, a portmanteau of the words camera and infecting.