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Researchers Provide Likely Explanation For the 'Sonic Weapon' Used At the US Embassy In Cuba (ieee.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: Last August, reports emerged that U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba had suffered a host of mysterious ailments. Speculation soon arose that a high-frequency sonic weapon was to blame. Acoustics experts, however, were quick to point out the unlikeliness of such an attack. Among other things, ultrasonic frequencies -- from 20 to 200 kilohertz -- don't propagate well in air and don't cause the ear pain, headache, dizziness, and other symptoms reported in Cuba. Also, some victims recalled hearing high-pitched sounds, whereas ultrasound is inaudible to humans. The mystery deepened in October, when the Associated Press (AP) released a 6-second audio clip, reportedly a recording of what U.S. embassy staff heard. The chirping tones, centered around 7 kHz, were indeed audible, but they didn't suggest any kind of weapon. Looking at a spectral plot of the clip on YouTube, Kevin Fu, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, noted some unusual ripples. He thought he might know what they meant.
Fu's lab specializes in analyzing the cybersecurity of devices connected to the Internet of Things, such as sensors, pacemakers, RFIDs, and autonomous vehicles. To Fu, the ripples in the spectral readout suggested some kind of interference. He discussed the AP clip with his frequent collaborator, Wenyuan Xu, a professor at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China, and her Ph.D. student Chen Yan. Yan and Xu started with a fast Fourier transform of the AP audio, which revealed the signal's exact frequencies and amplitudes. Then, through a series of simulations, Yan showed that an effect known as intermodulation distortion could have produced the AP sound. Intermodulation distortion occurs when two signals having different frequencies combine to produce synthetic signals at the difference, sum, or multiples of the original frequencies. Having reverse engineered the AP audio, Fu, Xu, and Yan then considered what combination of things might have caused the sound at the U.S. embassy in Cuba. "If ultrasound is to blame, then a likely cause was two ultrasonic signals that accidentally interfered with each other, creating an audible side effect," Fu says. "Maybe there was also an ultrasonic jammer in the room and an ultrasonic transmitter," he suggests. "Each device might have been placed there by a different party, completely unaware of the other."
Fu's lab specializes in analyzing the cybersecurity of devices connected to the Internet of Things, such as sensors, pacemakers, RFIDs, and autonomous vehicles. To Fu, the ripples in the spectral readout suggested some kind of interference. He discussed the AP clip with his frequent collaborator, Wenyuan Xu, a professor at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China, and her Ph.D. student Chen Yan. Yan and Xu started with a fast Fourier transform of the AP audio, which revealed the signal's exact frequencies and amplitudes. Then, through a series of simulations, Yan showed that an effect known as intermodulation distortion could have produced the AP sound. Intermodulation distortion occurs when two signals having different frequencies combine to produce synthetic signals at the difference, sum, or multiples of the original frequencies. Having reverse engineered the AP audio, Fu, Xu, and Yan then considered what combination of things might have caused the sound at the U.S. embassy in Cuba. "If ultrasound is to blame, then a likely cause was two ultrasonic signals that accidentally interfered with each other, creating an audible side effect," Fu says. "Maybe there was also an ultrasonic jammer in the room and an ultrasonic transmitter," he suggests. "Each device might have been placed there by a different party, completely unaware of the other."
you should see a doctor...for your mental illness!
Who would be using the transmitter? Who would be using a jammer. Moreover, which nation-state/s would bother with using ultrasonic in an age of cheap RF based technologies?
Life is not for the lazy.
Interference caused by multiple ultrasonic toothbrushes running simultaneously.
Someone must have "left a few of these "Things" somewhere in the building:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They looked for stuff like that, and didn't find it. Unless they are wholly incompetent, that's not the problem.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why would an IMD product be more harmful than any other audio signal of normal intensity and spectral content? That question needs to be answered before this theory can be taken seriously.
Also based on 6 seconds of audio and nothing else, doesnâ(TM)t rule out an attack or deliberate emplacement for a particular purpose, and doesnâ(TM)t change the outcome.
The amplitude of the audible tones was very high. If the audible tones were produced by out of band ultrasonic tones, these tones would need to be ridiculously large.
Intermod products are always much lower than the source signals... Bad guess guys.
your mom said the same thing to me last night.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (Although don't rule out malice)
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Mixing of two ultrasonic sources to produce an audible difference produce is exactly how some ultrasonic weapons previously described on slashdot work!
Not much to do in the Cuban Embassy these days.
It's the government. We pay them very well to be so incompetent.
I believe this is the exact cause given on a recent episode of Madam Secretary.
They looked for stuff like that, and didn't find it.
"Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs" -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Unless they are wholly incompetent, that's not the problem.
Like Dijkstra says, they can only find what they are looking for.
If there is something they don't know about . . . they don't know how to look for it . . . so they can't find it.
So the Cubans have something our spooks don't know about. We have only noticed the "collateral damage" it has cause . . . not the thing in itself. Kinda sorta like looking at the traces left by wacky sub-atomic particles.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If only someone at the time had put this together and stated it publically. What dosent add up here is the sensors mentioned in the white paper are all very low power. You dont cook peoples thinking jelly with a half watt transmitter or two throughout a building, though they do have the potential to be as annoying as old fluorescent lights. To mess up people you would need extremely high power sensors running all the time, something I find extremely hard to believe "was accidental with 2 or more parties not knowing" when a 50 cent sensor would clearly tell you something is broadcasting extreme amounts of energy.
The first paragraph says ultrasound doesn't travel well in air and does not cause pain. Second paragraph suggests an ultrasound transmitter and possibly jammer? What would be the point of any of these devices if they can't transmit very far?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
LMOL yeah the cubans have something the NSA does not know about....think about that for a second....
"This technical report analyzes how ultrasound could have..."
So it's not surprising you came up with a result that supports that conclusion. It would be more convincing if you were looking for something else and then came up with that conclusion, when you eliminated other explanations.
Why China was involved is curious thing...
This "sonic weapon" nonsense is all horseshit. Everything I've read is completely consistent with psychedelic ingestion. Could easily have been introduced either accidentally or deliberately.
The embassy counter-intelligence staff would have placed ultrasonic jammers to prevent this gadget from being used against the embassy staff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
Combined with the intermodulation of multiple switching power supplies in the rooms. Who hasn't heard the directional/locational whining sound of switching power supplies? Add poisoning to the mix and then you've got the mix of symptoms reported (brain damage, hearing loss, etc.).
Case closed?
His mom ordered you to start sucking her balls? Or did she order you to start sucking his balls?
They have the whole world to draw from, perhaps someone loaned it to them for a field test.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Just like back in the 1970, when "yellow rain" ONLY happened on Communist-controlled countries in Southeast Asia, there were all kinds of apologists for the Communists trying to excuse their actions.
It was AMAZING how those "contaminated bee droppings" never crossed borders into non-Communist countries....
They _said_ they did not find. Saying is not the same as not finding, especially for politics/espionage/...
Basic example - sometimes you leave a known bug to disseminate wrong information.
Ancient TV RC used ultrasound transmitters. They are no more used in the civilized world, but maybe in Cuba are still there. People of the embassy were busy with two remote controls in a fight to decide which TV sitcom to view and...
Would be looping the audio track from the video of Trump fucking Stormy Daniels.
Twitler thinks we'll be distracted from StormyGate by running off to meet with the NorKs? Ha ha. Good luck with that.
Wow, this episode is pretty good. I'm just waiting for the part where they find that tumor in POTUS that resolves everything.
Who writes this kind of sentence? "Researchers provide likely explanation for (...)"
This sentence is not written in a direct way, which makes the sentence look clumsily written.
The phrase "likely explanation" doesn't make any sense really, when the usual phrase is "most likely", which on the other hand would have a sensible meaning, but only if someone at Slashdot, or some writer takes it onto himself to make an interpretation. If making a statement about something objective, then the mere "provide likely explanation for(...)" isn't really directly referring to something the "researchers" has stated. The sentence also makes use of a type of contraction that really dumbs down the language, and also makes me wonder if they are actually referring to "a" thing, or just this bs way of phrasing things in this indirect and non-specific way. One would expect to see a sentence inlcuding: "the most likely explanation" or maybe "a likely explanation" (in itself a weak and vague point).
The phrase "Researchers provide likely explanation" sounds to me to be some kind of bs statement that has no meaning.
Who wrote this headline? Someone working at Slashdot? Or is it this 'anonymous reader'?
This type of suggestive bs reminds me of what was written in English as a statement from that one Ukrainian guy at UN( re. Assange), in which news articles kept making a point of this man as being a dissenting member at this working group at the UN, but upon reading the statement, I found the language only suitable for merely suggesting that he wants to dissent, but without the rationale to back it up, so as I remember it, I concluded that all his points were moot points, if one sought to find a rationale for why he supposedly was dissenting the conclusion of the working group he was on. If one wants to dissent something, there better be a good reason for it, the mere point of wanting to dissent by itself is just not very interesting, or relevant at all, if the given reason doesn't make good sense.
So, it was an ultrasonic weapon that use intermodulation as a targeting mechanism. Suggesting that this just happened by accident at US embassy is ridiculous at best.
If the OP explanation was probable, it would also occur randomly at other location. We haven't heard about that so far.
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Now we wait for diplomats to provide a swift and loud apology just like they switfly and loudly rushed to accuse them of having created a sonic weapon to attack their staff.
Oh btw how efficiently does ANY sort of sound travel through bullet-proof glass that they have on pretty much all embassies?
To me, what sound far fetched is a deliverate attack. I find only possible that this was an attack, but very likely that there is another explanation.
This one has some nice elements: espionage (and counter espionage) devices in the embassy, likely.
The interference of sound waves reinforcing some frequencies, likely (of course the details have to be checked: frequencies of the sources, resulting spectrum, physiological effect of such a sound, etc).
An attack? We woud have to come up with a suspect, a motive, an the explanation for the odd choice of weapon
So the Cubans have something our spooks don't know about.
Plaintains?
Rogue states like Cuba and North Korea don't necessarily need to develop this sort of thing for themselves - they could just let in Russian or Chinese intelligence agents who'd have something they'd need to test.
It's like the reverse case of the Cold War where a lot of US allies - naming no names but the CPU in your cellphone or laptop was either invented, designed or manufactured in one - allowed US intelligence personnel in to test some clever intelligence gathering ideas on the USSR, PRC or their allies in return for access to the information they gathered.
This being intelligence stuff it's all a bit legally dubious even in the West. God knows what happens in places where the intelligence agencies can openly ignore the law like China, Russia, Cuba or North Korea.
For example Peter Wright described a plan to convert a bust of Lenin into an ultrasound reflector - the idea being the reflected ultrasound would be modulated with an audio signal, the audio signal being the sound around it -
https://spyinggame.me/2012/07/...
As to what else went on inside the embassy, perhaps MI5 picked it up by electronic means, perhaps not. Peter Wright describes a delicious plan devised by MI5 in the 1950s, using new technology to modify an ordinary object so that it would reflect sound waves; carrying no transmitter or receiver itself, the object was virtually undetectable. Why not modify some valuable object along these lines and give it to the Soviet ambassador? Wright consulted someone who knew the ways of the Soviet diplomatic community and had also been with MI5: Klop Ustinov, father of the actor. Ustinov suggested a bust of Lenin or a model of the Kremlin, something so sacred that the Soviets wouldn't be tempted to sell it. Lenin was vetoed ("the smooth contours of Vladimir Ilyich's skull were too rounded to be sure of reflecting sound waves," Wright tells us) and ultimately the FO abandoned the project, for reasons we do not learn.
I.e. the idea of using a microwave or ultrasound reflector as a remote microphone has been around for some time.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Except when it comes to the insurance industry, the financial industry, the health care industry, and -- you thought I was going to forget the most important one -- government.
Otherwise, you're spot on.
Cuba. Home to untold parasites..
MUH SPIES!
Fucking maroons.
Ultrasound is cools stuff. I read it is possible to make a window function as a microphone by blasting ultrasound at it from one location and listening to the reflected signal from another.
Also, some joker took out a patent several years ago .. something to the effect of by crossing two or more modulated ultrasonic beams it is possible to make sound appear to originate from midair. Maybe the whole thing is a giant gaslighting project.
Dont you Americans ever get tired of veing such fearfilled pussies??
Wow, you need to preview more.
The reality is, people are accusing Cuba of having come up with some super secret sonic weapon, that most physicists are saying just isn't plausible.
This is actually the most plausible explanation I've heard for this, because it isn't "yarg, teh Cubans have teh alien technology".
This sounds like a random combination of one or more things, and I wouldn't be surprised if they all belonged to the Americans.
I've been to Cuba several times, and the likelihood they're blasting US embassy staff with some super secret sonic beam is laughable. They're great people, but it's not a place where you're going to find advanced technology which physicists say can't exist.
IMD results from non-linear mixing processes. What exactly can cause non-linear mixing of ultrasonic or audible frequencies? Where's the mixer? What's the physical process? This is scientific technobabble.
u cant spell embassy without the word ASS
Audio engineers and neuroscientists have been saying this since the story first came out: it's not a sonic weapon. It's not some "unknown type of sonic weapon" or a "sonic weapon that utilizes unknown physics" or "leaves scientists baffled by new sonic weapon." It's almost certainly a microwave transmission, probably to energize a passive listening device like The Thing:
It's highly directional and so only affects one person in a room, without anyone else noticing anything. Moving their heads from one position causes the symptoms to go away. That can fit with both ultrasonic intermodulation and microwaves, but none of the other symptoms can: remember, intermodulation products are lower amplitude than the modulating signals. So to create these allegedly loud noises, unless you're talking about such high power that the transmitting devices are the size of shipping containers and they're in the same room, they're not going be the result of acoustic coupling. So "directionality" and "some victims hear ringing" is really the only thing that supports the 'sonic weapon' theory.
But no, the auditory hallucinations are instead almost certainly a result of tissue heating in the temporal lobe, which is why they also experience effects like dizziness and nausea, tingling sensations, headaches, memory problems, and brain swelling. The effects have been compared to concussions and CTE, which would easily look like tissue heating. That's really easy to accomplish with a microwave, and can be done from outside in a van or from a nearby building.
Please turn off smart quotes on your phone!!! doesnâ(TM)t is not very fun to read!! Settings/General/Keyboards/Smart Punctuation Thanks, Anon Helper.
"Among other things, ultrasonic frequencies -- from 20 to 200 kilohertz -- don't propagate well in air"
That's why dogs can hear my dog whistle from about a mile off, right?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
This tech has been around for decades. Its currently in use.
Here is a demo from decades ago:
https://youtu.be/4eZVF1ouTT4?t...
Ultrasonic beat waves/interference is what this looked like from the beginning. Reverse engineering isn't necessary to discover this.
When asked to comment on the possible experimental error of examining cricket noises, Wu went silent. All that was heard was crickets chirping.
It is not known if the crickets heard were the experimental error, or sympathetic crickets attempting to illustrate an awkward moment.
Welcome to Slashdot where you can read last week's news today:
http://ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/25450-cuba-sonic-attacks-a-covert-accident
(from 8 days ago)
The NSA hacks the whole world. Have you been living in a cave for the last 20 years?
I read about these things in a white paper a while ago. From what I remember, the SNR on laser microphones is really low, depending on the type of window and glass. If you can get the window vibrating, even at ultrasonic frequencies, it can drop the SNR to unusable levels.
A couple of 1970-style ultrasonic intrusion alarm sensors might make the same sounds by hetrodyning together. It is more than likely that such things could be found in the embassy. The embassy building was constructed in '53 and re-occupied by the U.S. in '77.
I've seen no credible explanation for the injuries reported to have occurred to personnel there. The U.S. has monitored for various sorts of energy, RF, sound, light, since Theremin's Great Seal Bug (the "Thing") which the post above refers to. The absence of any credible cause makes this difficult to believe in. Sure the Russians and Cubans are capable of this sort of thing, but that the U.S. failed to detect it is difficult to believe.
Bruce Perens.
The explanation of the number of Ph.D. scientists it took to explain "Duh, it's a Hetrodyne!", and then to not even use the correct language (intermodulation distortion is an effect of hetrodyning signals in a supposedly linear circuit, not the hetrodyne itself), is really pathetic.
You could get a better explanation from the average radio ham in clearer language.
Bruce Perens.
Except of course all the experts in audio, ultrasound and RF say such a weapon is impossible to build. What the US state department described was a sound weapon that couldn't be heard, destroyed hearing and affected peoples minds and was targeted as specific people. Sound, ultrasound and RF cannot be controlled in a manner like that or cause those symptoms and that kind of distance.
The state department cooked up a fanciful weapon to describe these events but everyone that was an expert said it was impossible. What happened here was likely far more mundane.
If it was a device that the NSA was using to spy on conversations that CIA didn't want them to hear, they would "not find" it, right?
Yeah they have too many data centers to sift through.
They will find they had all the info on this weapon since 2012 about 15 years from now.