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Sonic and ultrasonic attacks damage hard drives and crash OSes
Attackers can cause potentially harmful hard drive and operating system crashes by playing sounds over low-cost speakers embedded in computers or sold in stores, a team of researchers demonstrated last week.
The attacks use sonic and ultrasonic sounds to disrupt magnetic HDDs as they read or write data. The researchers showed how the technique could stop some video-surveillance systems from recording live streams. Just 12 seconds of specially designed acoustic interference was all it took to cause video loss in a 720p system made by Ezviz. Sounds that lasted for 105 seconds or more caused the stock Western Digital 3.5 HDD in the device to stop recording altogether until it was rebooted.
[...] "For such systems, the integrity of the recorded data is vital to the usefulness of the system, which makes them susceptible to acoustic interference or vibration attacks," the researchers wrote in a paper titled "Blue Note: How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems."
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:31AM
A friend once told me that a friend of his wrote a program that repeatedly accessed a floppy drive so as to make a "squeak" sound:
Squeak
Squeak
Squeak
Squeak
Squeak Squeak
SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK
SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK
SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK
SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAKSQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK
Squeak
Squeak
squeak
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:54AM (1 child)
So while you need to access the actual location of the server to play the disruptive sound, it still brings a beautiful level of ghost-in-the-shell-like hacking to disrupt a system.
I actually find these sorts of hacks much much more interesting than malformed headers and overflows. I mean this is truly ingenious.
We had a data centre incident where the fire suppression measures were activated by mistake (and not properly to boot) which meant that all the halon gas came through a single outlet rather than multiple outlets. The volume of the shock-wave that went through the data centre knocked out the majority of hard drives near the nozzle and then gradually less as the racks got further and further away. However that was an insanely loud noise. To be able to knock systems offline with a small off-the-shelf speaker is genius!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:23AM
I thought of that when I saw this story.
We had a story about a month ago on that topic.
Loud Sound From Fire Alarm System Shuts Down Nasdaq's Scandinavian Data Center [soylentnews.org]
The fact that they're now doing HDD hacks via a little dinky speaker that can fit inside a computer is taking it to another level.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:28AM
Yoko Ono albums in reverse have been doing this since the Waco incident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:34AM (3 children)
They said "low cost" speakers, not "small" ones.
I get the idea these speakers are more like those used in a stadium.
These I am familiar with... I bought some used ones to hook into my home burglar alarm. They are powered by 100 watt royer converters powered from car battery. Just one frequency. If that thing goes off, everything in the house goes to rattling. Nothing stays on the shelves. Its a last-ditch make somebody go away thing.
Pay attention to the sound levels ( SPL in dB ) they use... we are talking about sounds in the range of a jackhammer or chainsaw at a distance of 1 meter. [wikipedia.org]
I don't think your little 3 inch speaker in your radio is gonna do it.
But if you put your HDD in my house, and turned my getup on, I don't count on it working for long. Especially if you tuned it for resonance.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:59AM (2 children)
Here's an example [youtube.com] of how sound can affect hard drives.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:15AM (1 child)
Thanks! I stand corrected big time...
I would not believed it - but the source looks credible enough.. a guy who does stuff, not a guy trying to sell me stuff.
I did not think a human yell could deliver near enough energy. A jackhammer three feet away, definitely, but someone yelling at it?
Thanks again... people like you posting stuff like this is exactly why I love reading these forums... I learn the damndest things. With this one being near the top of stuff that I would have never believed.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @11:19AM
You're very welcome, but I cannot take credit for that link. It was posted here on SN as a story earlier this year. I could not find the story (SN search leaves a bit to be desired) but I found it on YouTube.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dbe on Thursday May 31 2018, @02:59PM (1 child)
That video shows that screaming at a server disk array increase latency:
(beware the sound is loud on that video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 [youtube.com]
-dbe
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 31 2018, @09:22PM
That is fucking hilarious! I don't know why, but there's something really satisfying about the fact that even a lifeless machine doesn't take abuse from people.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...