A camera authentication method and a control apparatus are provided, and are applicable to an identity authentication of an on-board camera in the autonomous driving field. The method includes: obtaining one or more frames of a first image shot by a to-be-authenticated camera; determining one or more light intensity offset values of N photosensitive units based on the one or more frames of the first image; determining a matching degree between the light intensity offset values of the N photosensitive units and a preset N-dimensional vector; and if the matching degree meets a preset condition, determining that authentication of the to-be-authenticated camera succeeds, where the N photosensitive units are in a photosensitive layer of the to-be-authenticated camera, and the photosensitive layer includes M photosensitive units, where N≤M. This technical solution is used to improve camera security.