acoustic attack can BSOD your computer!

[I4rg£8all8ag]

Security researchers have demonstrated how attackers could cause physical damage to hard drives, and cause PCs to crash, just by playing sounds through a computer's speaker.

That’s the threat raised by a group of security researchers who have demonstrated an out-of-the-ordinary method of disrupting an organisation – through sound waves.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Zhejiang University have demonstrated that it’s possible for attackers to cause physical damage to hard drives, and cause PCs to crash, just by playing sounds through a computer’s speaker. 

With audible sound waves it’s possible to vibrate the read/write head and platters in the magnetic hard disk drives commonly found in desktop and laptop computers. Vibrations outside of operational bounds can lead to both hardware and software being damaged, causing file system corruption and reboots. The researchers even showed that it is possible for an attacker to use a device’s built-in speakers (or nearby speakers) to cause persistent errors.

Meanwhile, ultrasonic waves can have a similar impact on devices, with sounds inaudible to the human ear altering the output of the hard disk drive’s shock sensor, and causing the read/write head to park.

It’s important to recognise, of course, that it’s not just regular desktop or laptop computers that could be impacted via a Blue Note attack.

One ingenious attack scenario demonstrated by the researchers saw them target a digital video security camera.

The surveillance camera contained a DVR that stored footage on a hard disk drive. However, when hit by an acoustic attack the system could no longer write any data to its hard disk drive. The camera continued to try to save video data in its RAM, but within about 12 seconds it ran out of available space, and lost all data until the acoustic attack was stopped. 

[straycat19]

I haven't seen a speaker in a desktop computer in years (and they were so cheap they could barely beep)  and the ones in laptops would disentegrate before they produced enough waves to harm anything.  Another one of those 'we did it in the lab so everyone needs to watch out'.  Of course if the acoustic noisemaker is a 12 gauge shotgun filled with 00 buck then I guarantee that the computer will be totally destroyed.  While we're talking about lab experiments, I did one last week.  I used a Raspberry Pi 3 B and an Alfa AUS036H with a high gain directional antenna to wipe out my neighbors Wifi for 3 days using an evil twin attack. So beware of your neighbors.

[humble3d]

WAS THIS THE SOURCE ?? 

 

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/05/30/acoustic-attack-blue-screen-windows-computer/