Sonic and Ultrasonic Attacks Damage Hard Drives and Crash OSes (arstechnica.com)

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Sonic and Ultrasonic Attacks Damage Hard Drives and Crash OSes (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @07:00PM from the bad-cover-songs dept.

Dan Goodin reports via Ars Technica: 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. The device uses flash storage to house its firmware, but by default it uses a magnetic HDD to store the large quantities of video it records. The attack used a speaker hanging from a ceiling that rested about four inches above the surveillance system's HDD. The researchers didn't remove the casing or otherwise tamper with the surveillance system. The technique was also able to disrupt HDDs in desktop and laptop computers running both Windows and Linux. In some cases, it even required a reboot before the PCs worked properly. The paper titled "Blue Note: How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems" can be found here (PDF).

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4 inches? by Bert64 · 2018-05-29 19:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

If you're within 4 inches of the drive you could use a hammer, or just unplug the power... Works against SSDs too!

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1. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:31 · Score: 0
  
  "How Unauthorized Percussive Maintenance Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems"
2. Re:4 inches? by jibjibjib · 2018-05-29 19:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The speaker doesn't necessarily have to be within 4 inches; perhaps with further tuning or a different speaker it could work from elsewhere within the room. And there are plenty of plausible scenarios where you don't have physical access to the hard drive, but you do have access to a nearby speaker.
  e.g.
  - you're running a website and you want to DoS your users' laptop hard drives using the laptop speakers
  - you compromised one computer (or phone, or media player, or other device with speakers) and want to use it to attack another device sitting on the desk beside it.
  - you rented datacenter space just above your target's server, and your server has an internal speaker which you can attack them with.
3. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:45 · Score: 1
  
  I have skimmed through the PDF and in every graph their scale is starting at 100 dB SPL.
  That is very loud, think concert hall loud. I not sure if this is a very pratictal attack.
4. Re:4 inches? by jibjibjib · 2018-05-29 19:56 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It sounds to me from the paper like a laptop's own speakers are capable of generating enough sound to disrupt the laptop's hard drive, in ultrasound ranges that most humans can't hear. Yes, it's a lot of sound energy, but still possible for it to be unnoticed, especially if you timed it for when the user isn't around, or mixed it into music or other legitimate sound.
5. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:00 · Score: 0
  
  If your target is deaf?
6. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:33 · Score: 0
  
  What frequencies do they use? I used to use raw white noise code in C with loud speakers to mess with my wife because she can hear just past a higher pitch than I can and I was always amazed how she could hear it and I couldn't. The dogs in my neighborhood would always start barking wildly too. Never thought to test out sound generations at my HDDs.
7. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:43 · Score: 0
  
  If you're within 4 inches of the drive you could use a hammer, or just unplug the power... Works against SSDs too!
  *You* don't have to be within 4 inches. Your speaker-carrying drone does.
8. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:48 · Score: 1
  
  If you're within 4 inches of the drive you could use a hammer, or just unplug the power... Works against SSDs too!
  An inside job that uses a loud ultrasonic sound leaves no traces. The video surveillance equipment simply stopped working. On the other hand, if your inside contact hammers the HDD hard, it leaves some traces, I'd say...
9. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:24 · Score: 0
  
  Is it even possible to still buy a laptop with a mechanical hard drive?
10. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:32 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, a low-cost budget thing with somewhat large drive. It will be mechanical. Not all people buy state-of-the-art laptops. Think non-nerds who go for cheap.
11. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:34 · Score: 0
  
  This was news in 2008: https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4
12. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 22:09 · Score: 0
  
  Non-nerds who go for cheap aren't likely to have anything of value on their computers anyway. Just their browser cache from Facebook and some porn at most.
13. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 22:11 · Score: 0
  
  Speaker carrying drone? You mean those things that have like 10 minutes worth of flight time and can't carrying much weight, like a big ass speaker and heavy battery required to power said speaker?
14. Re:4 inches? by Entrope · 2018-05-29 22:58 · Score: 1
  
  "The suspect was recorded on CCTV carrying a large speaker into the surveillance system room. The recording stopped approximately a minute and a half later." type inside job that leaves no traces?
15. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:11 · Score: 0
  
  Are you kidding? Apple still puts them in IMacs
16. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:18 · Score: 0
  
  Given the distance, how did they verify that the effect was not from the magnetic field generated by the speaker and not the sound?
17. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 00:09 · Score: 0
  
  "The suspect was recorded on CCTV carrying a large speaker into the surveillance system room. The recording stopped approximately a minute and a half later." type inside job that leaves no traces?
  I have no idea how large a speaker would have to be. But I doubt a hammer in an office would be discreet either. Both before, or during the attack.
18. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 00:15 · Score: 0
  
  Yes. It's quite common to find laptops with a decent SSD in the M2 slot, and a large spinning hard drive. I have one as a stopgap machine, will replace the spinning disk when 1TB SSDs get a bit cheaper
19. Re: 4 inches? by ctilsie242 · 2018-05-30 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  I do know that when something like Halon or ECARO cylinders pop in a data center, that often causes hard drive failures due to the initial hissing sound, and there are advances to reduce that noise.
  Ultimately, the best defense is moving to SSD, although with that form of media, there is the issue of archival life. Once those electrons escape the gate, they are gone for good.
20. Re: 4 inches? by ctilsie242 · 2018-05-30 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, almost all cheap laptops will come with a 5400 RPM HDD if they don't use a 32GB eMMC card. Of course, swapping it out for a SSD is an option, but some laptops take a lot of digging, prying, and ungluing to reach the drive, risking damage.
21. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 01:09 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, from Lenovo at least and most others probably. May have a 1920x1080 or 1366x768 screen ; one USB-C port plus normal USB. Still has RJ45 and maybe a DVD drive. Latest Intel CPU like Kaby Lake, soon to be (or already) Coffee Lake and Cannon Lake.
  Windows 10 runs horrible unless you disable things like search indexing etc., which you don't need anyway if you navigate to folders instead of searching. Then the hard drive keeps mostly quiet instead of constant bouts of 100% use!
  You get 1TB on a low end laptop. Non nerds who store movies can use that. Nerds who store movies or games etc. can use that too, and they can make it fast by avoiding unnecessary I/O (see : search indexing, superfetch, updater for one-year MS Office etc. or just installing Linux with Mate, XFCE, LXDE, tiling window manager etc.)
22. Re: 4 inches? by The+Grim+Reefer · 2018-05-30 01:29 · Score: 1
  
  Given the distance, how did they verify that the effect was not from the magnetic field generated by the speaker and not the sound?
  Didn't read TFA, but from the summary, it sounds like the speaker that is already in the computer will also work. Regardless, have you ever taken apart a HDD? They have pretty damn strong magnets in them. It will take a very powerful magnet to disrupt a HDD from 4 inches away. I doubt Even a large subwoofer would cause an issue at that distance.
  I am curious if this has something to do with the hearing loss of the people at the embassy in Cuba. High decibel ultra sonic sound can cause hearing loss as well as having other effects on humans.
23. Re: 4 inches? by Spazmania · 2018-05-30 01:56 · Score: 2
  
  Are you sure it's because of the initial hissing sound? I would expect it to be due to the sudden air pressure change. Halon and comparable systems work by rapidly adding enough gas to an area that the partial pressure of oxygen drops below what's needed to sustain a fire.
  
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  Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
24. Re:4 inches? by rahvin112 · 2018-05-30 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  Lets not forget sound attenuates using the inverse square law. At double the distance you need 4X as much volume for the same sound pressures. So if I takes 4 inches and you need 20' you need 3600 times the decibels. And this doesn't include attenuation through walls or other materials. I'd be curious what decibel level this took so you could calculate what kind of volume you'd need at something like 20', if it involves hauling around 20' speakers I'm not sure this is a viable technique in the real world.
25. Re: 4 inches? by aaarrrgggh · 2018-05-30 02:31 · Score: 1
  
  I was surprised too, but it isn't the pressure wave it is the actual audible noise from what research I have had access to.
26. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 02:32 · Score: 0
  
  The speaker doesn't necessarily have to be within 4 inches; perhaps with further tuning or a different speaker it could work from elsewhere within the room. And there are plenty of plausible scenarios where you don't have physical access to the hard drive, but you do have access to a nearby speaker.
  e.g.
  - you're running a website and you want to DoS your users' laptop hard drives using the laptop speakers
  - you compromised one computer (or phone, or media player, or other device with speakers) and want to use it to attack another device sitting on the desk beside it.
  - you rented datacenter space just above your target's server, and your server has an internal speaker which you can attack them with.
  If you modulate the ultra sound like a square wave you have the ability to code.
27. Re:4 inches? by BronsCon · 2018-05-30 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  Given that this attack can use the speaker found in a lot of computers, the speaker needn't be very big, nor the battery very heavy. A piezo transducer and a small circuit powered by a 3032, or from the drone's own battery, could likely accomplish the task.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
28. Re: 4 inches? by Joce640k · 2018-05-30 03:32 · Score: 1
  
  Given the distance, how did they verify that the effect was not from the magnetic field generated by the speaker and not the sound?
  Shouting at the drives also works:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
  (not a Rickroll)
  
  --
  No sig today...
29. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 03:47 · Score: 0
  
  Are you kidding? Apple still puts them in IMacs
  Which is, granted, particularly inconvenient to use as a laptop.
30. Re: 4 inches? by ctilsie242 · 2018-05-30 03:56 · Score: 1
  
  Hard disks don't really care about pressure as much, unless it is so great that it pops the internal membrane, causing the helium or pure air inside to leak out. One rarely hears about a hard drive fail on a laptop on a plane. However, the noise is what kills them. This is such an issue, that some companies are doing a lot of work to re-engineer the gas nozzles to reduce the initial noise.
31. Re:4 inches? by Bengie · 2018-05-30 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  So if I takes 4 inches and you need 20' you need 3600 times the decibels
  Don't you mean something like 35.5 more decibels? It's a 3600x difference in energy, but decibels are log based. Log 3600 = 3.55 bels
32. Re: 4 inches? by HiThere · 2018-05-30 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  FWIW, I would prefer a hard drive over an SSD. Hard drives are more resistant to losing the data in storage. I'd hardly call them archival quality, but they're a lot closer. And generally I don't depend on I/O to be fast...I depend on RAM for that.
  
  --
  
  I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
33. Re:4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 06:35 · Score: 0
  
  Sound can be focused in a more directed way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNzf9ztnAk
34. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 07:12 · Score: 0
  
  Not a large speaker, they won't work for this attack. Large is for bass. For ultrasound, you want a tweeter. Preferably a small one. Normal tweeters are meant for hearable sound.
  It is easy to transfer lots of energy at high frequency, much easier than at lower frequency. And you may not need that much energy to mess up a disk. Get resonance in the access arm, and it might jump so much, it scratches the platter. And it will definitely move so much that bits being written go to the wrong spot. I.e. overwrite some neighbour bit.
  Mechanical drives use a voice coil to move the arm fast. So named, because it is similiar to a speaker voice coil. Play sound in the frequency ranges normally used for moving the arm, and derail it.
35. Re:4 inches? by rahvin112 · 2018-05-30 07:31 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know honestly. The inverse square law works on the decibels so I'm not sure it's so clear cut, I believe you are right but someone that knows more about sound would need to chime in. Given the other post that says you needed 118 decibels at 4 inches I'm not sure 154 decibels at 20' would be equivalent.
  My main point was even if you can do this from 4 inches with a chainsaw sound level, you'd need some massive speakers and power output to do it from outside a building. In fac,t I dare say the sound pressure would do more damage to the building than the hard drives in such a situation. But more than that, at these kind of sound volumes this isn't something anyone is doing surreptitiously
36. Re: 4 inches? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 08:32 · Score: 0
  
  Electrically generated sound doesn't tend to attenuate at the inverse square law. That would only apply for a point source emitted in all directions. Natural, non-organic sounds (tree falling in the woods) are point sources, animal noises tend to be a rough cone forwards of the mouth.
  A "standard" bare speaker emits predominantly in 2 cones, forward and back from the direction it's aimed. Using an appropriate horn, you can nearly collimate the sound energy and get substantially lower attenuation over distance at a cost of having to aim quite precisely.
37. Re: 4 inches? by viperidaenz · 2018-05-30 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  Most hard drives aren't sealed, they have a vent containing a filter.
  There are some helium filled drivers, but most, and all laptop drives are not sealed, there is no membrane to pop.
38. Re:4 inches? by viperidaenz · 2018-05-30 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  154dB would in impressive
  
  150dB Sensation of being compressed as if underwater
  152dB Vibration is painful and felt in joints
  153dB Throat vibrating so hard it is impossible to swallow
  154dB Compression will burst child’s balloon
  155dB Experience cooling from excited air movement, up to 15 degree C perceived cooling
  158dB Inside of a rock concert speaker bin with 5000 watts power
  http://www.decibelcar.com/menu...
39. Re: 4 inches? by torkus · 2018-05-31 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  It's definitely the acoustics. Nasdaq pretty much lost a datacenter a month ago due to the fire suppression system going off so there's recent, modern, real-word examples of this.
  That hissing noise is far louder than you're thinking though. More like if you opened one of the industrial gas (welding) tanks with nothing on it. It's painfully loud and the vibrations are sufficient to crash drive heads.
  
  --
  You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Sensationalist much? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:21 · Score: 0

"The attack used a speaker hanging from the ceiling"
Okay, so this makes it sound like they used some sort of existing PA system to play back the audio.
"that rested about four inches above the surveillance system's HDD"
Oh. So they had physical access to the DVR. And physical access is root access. If you can get close enough to a DVR to disconnect it, why not just pull the plug? Just for the sake of argument, let's assume the device is somehow hardwired into the wall (and you didn't bring bolt cutters with insulated handles). Why not just use a large magnetic coil with an alternating field to fry the entire thing? Why does it need to be a speaker? At least then you could disrupt something like an SSD, which AFAIK is immune to audio attacks such as these.
Everything about this makes it sound like you can just pickup a boom box and play back a specifically crafted MP3 file to disrupt/crash any HDD based electronics within range, but that's clearly not the case. I'm not really sure what the point of this is, to be honest, other than showing that a mechanical device is potentially vulnerable to mechanical vibrations (shock and horror!).
1. Re:Sensationalist much? by AHuxley · 2018-05-29 19:42 · Score: 1
  
  Think of walking around a restricted office as an invited guest.
  The network security will detect new wifi, use of a usb stick, changes to networks.
  Sounds a human will not notice can change an OS internally.
  No fancy talking about a usb stick, needing to go into a secure computer room. No new wifi to get detected.
  Just talk for a set time and let the hidden sound do the access.
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
2. Re:Sensationalist much? by apparently · 2018-05-29 19:44 · Score: 1
  
  If you can get close enough to a DVR to disconnect it, why not just pull the plug?
  I don't have to get close enough to the DVR to disconnect it - I just need to get a speaker snuck in there.
  
  ...or get remote access to a PC in the same room as the DVR. ...or get the security intern to install my sweet whoopee cushion app.
SSD by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:45 · Score: 0

Turn it up to 11 to crash SSD!
118 dB required by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

As pointed out on ars, the volume required is much like putting your ear against a chainsaw at full throttle.
Nothing here, move along.
1. Re: 118 dB required by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:25 · Score: 0
  
  Roseanne's tweets took 0 dB. Her Trump propaganda machine still crashed within hours of the attack, lol
2. Re: 118 dB required by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:38 · Score: 0
  
  thats ok, drumpf will hire her, just like he'll hire all the unemployed coal miners whose jobs he couldn't save. drumpf 2020! make 'murika greedy again!
3. Re:118 dB required by info6568 · 2018-05-30 00:27 · Score: 2
  
  To stop a hard disk ... yes ... but you can make a long term "attack" damaging the disks slowly with not so strong noise.
  Everything depends on what it is your goal.
4. Re:118 dB required by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 02:35 · Score: 0
  
  As pointed out on ars, the volume required is much like putting your ear against a chainsaw at full throttle.
  Nothing here, move along.
  It's alright. It's ultrasound. You can't hear it, remember?
5. Re:118 dB required by BronsCon · 2018-05-30 03:09 · Score: 1
  
  Not just deaf people, anyone who can't hear mid- or high-ultrasound, which is, well, everyone.
  
  --
  APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
6. Re:118 dB required by Bengie · 2018-05-30 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  Most speakers barely touch ultrasound. Most only hit the edge of ultrasound, that many humans can still hear. The attack also mentions integrated speaks, which are going to have a horrible frequency range. Even if they can hit ultrasound, the amount of power is going to be abysmal. Going to need that magnetic speaker close enough to cause issues via magnetism.
What speaker? by Tough+Love · 2018-05-29 19:49 · Score: 1

The last two out of two builds I did, the case didn't even have a speaker. Did not miss it a bit. I don't think the "cheap PC speaker" is even a thing any more, and laptops - which always have speakers - don't have hard drives except unless they are super crap, then don't worry about it.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
1. Re:What speaker? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 20:27 · Score: 0
  
  Most servers still tend to have them, or at least some sort of piezo-tweeter to beep out when local issues occur.
2. Re:What speaker? by BillTheKatt · 2018-05-29 21:06 · Score: 1
  
  Do you think this will work with my Adlib card?
3. Re:What speaker? by Zocalo · 2018-05-29 21:24 · Score: 2
  
  Case speakers are definitely a relic of a bygone age. No idea about all-in-one desktops since I don't do those, but other than laptops I don't think I've had a case with one for getting on for at least a decade now, although many motherboards do still seem to include a piezo-electric tweeter somewhere. That's pretty much redundant too, however, since anything sent to it is usually hijacked by the drivers for either the on-board sound chip or any add-on audio hardware pretty early in the boot process. Generally speaking, you're going to need to trigger some kind of pre-BIOS/UEFI failure to get anything out of it, and even that seems to be dying out as my last few mobos have all had a pair of seven-segment LED displays that show a sequence of hex status codes as the system progresses through the boot process.
  
  --
  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
4. Re: What speaker? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:15 · Score: 0
  
  You mustn't have bought boards within the last few years. We all thought the code displays were far better than beep codes, and we even got push buttons for power and reset! And then manufacturers stopped including them as of late. You can find some that still have them, but a lot of top of the line boards just don't have them anymore.
5. Re:What speaker? by Tough+Love · 2018-05-29 23:16 · Score: 1
  
  Generally speaking, you're going to need to trigger some kind of pre-BIOS/UEFI failure to get anything out of it, and even that seems to be dying out as my last few mobos have all had a pair of seven-segment LED displays that show a sequence of hex status codes as the system progresses through the boot process.
  LED display on the MB is civilized, but most don't have it and blink some LED instead, which nearly all new MBs have and is getting universal. Even NUCs do this. Way more useful imho. I never did like the lame little beep on boot, can't shed a tear for its demise.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
6. Re: What speaker? by Zocalo · 2018-05-30 01:00 · Score: 1
  
  Nope; haven't felt much need to upgrade my main PC (the only one I'd still consider hand-building myself) for a while, and I suspect I'm now going to make do until the Meltdown and Spectre issues are properly fixed in the silicon without any of the current hacky microcode workarounds. Other than those that are now appliances all my other systems are still custom, they're just built by a local PC/component seller instead (although I could just as easily use Dell or other build to order firm) - quite frankly the marginal extra cost is worth it for the time saved and a warranty, and my current clients are very much COTS when it comes to PC/server hardware. I do miss the days when it was both fun and more economical to DIY almost every build though.
  
  --
  UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
7. Re:What speaker? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 01:57 · Score: 0
  
  Beeps helped me a few short years ago. They're helpful when you have a dead graphics card, the beep codes for that are easily recognizable. The graphics card was the oldest thing in there save for the case and a hard drive, it only lasted about nine years because it dated to the switch to lead-free solder. I had such an old graphics card because it didn't use much power (32 watt TDP), had dual DVI-I (i.e. dual VGA capable) and had decent memory bandwith (22.4GB/s). In fact I just kept it and put it in a cheap electrical oven when it failed, till that stopping working for good.
  Beep codes for memory failure can be useful too (may be a motherboard or CPU failure - memory controller is in the CPU). Or an ominous one, no beep at all.
  I hope the future motherboard I might buy if any will have a header for the speaker.
  You can even test a motherboard/CPU/RAM assembly with only a PSU and speaker and nothing else. If the single beep comes out it's at least sort of working.
8. Re:What speaker? by Bengie · 2018-05-30 05:40 · Score: 1
  
  Some motherboards use pulsing LEDs instead of pulsing speakers or just a numeric LED readout.
9. Re:What speaker? by Tough+Love · 2018-05-30 10:21 · Score: 1
  
  You can even test a motherboard/CPU/RAM assembly with only a PSU and speaker and nothing else.
  I always do that with a new build, but without the speaker. Plug in processor, memory and power supply, then short the power button pins with a letter opener :-)
  Usually, the sound of the processor fan is enough to know it posted, but LEDs can be helpful or essential if it doesn't.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Easily fixed with two capacitors by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 19:54 · Score: 0

One in series with speaker (kills subsonic) and one in parallel (kills ultra sonic). You do the math. It ain't rocket science.
1. Re: Easily fixed with two capacitors by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 18:48 · Score: 0
  
  Not that easy without impacting the (normal) sound quality. The speaker is far from an ideal inductor due to the physical mass moving around. Filtering before the amplifier is easier.
Who uses hard drives? by slashmydots · 2018-05-29 20:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is why I use SSDs. 800G impacts and 200G vibrations while in use are no problem. Then again, it depends how much storage you actually need.
1. Re:Who uses hard drives? by scottrocket · 2018-05-29 21:20 · Score: 1
  
  "Then again, it depends how much storage you actually need."
  When I googled this, all I could find was a 1 TB, 8-channel dvr, with a security camera set-up. OTOH, I only went through 2 pages of links...
2. Re:Who uses hard drives? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:37 · Score: 0
  
  camera feed recording? like i think its mentioned :P Since they loop overwrite magnetic is much better choice...
3. Re:Who uses hard drives? by thegarbz · 2018-05-29 23:14 · Score: 1
  
  You use SSDs because you're worried someone will put a speaker 4" away from your computer emitting a sound roughtly as loud as a chainsaw?
  I think you have bigger worries than data loss.
4. Re:Who uses hard drives? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:42 · Score: 0
  
  You can't be sure someone isn't secretly accessing your data since SSD don't make any noise
5. Re:Who uses hard drives? by swb · 2018-05-30 00:01 · Score: 2
  
  Modern high quality SSDs have really good write durability, but do they have enough to really survive in a DVR that's recording constantly at least at the price points acceptable enough for warehouse store security camera bundles?
  It'd be an interesting thing to try out. I could see where the increased throughput of flash media could make for enhanced DVR features, like high frame rate recording but extremely fast time lapse scanning, although I assume they've kind of figured out how to do that with slower rotational media.
6. Re:Who uses hard drives? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 01:11 · Score: 0
  
  800G impacts and 200G vibrations while in use are no problem
  Please demonstrate. Here, I'll lend you a hammer...
7. Re:Who uses hard drives? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  You can't ever be sure that you erased the drive either. I guess you could accomplish the same result by modifying a mechanical drive's firmware.
8. Re:Who uses hard drives? by Bengie · 2018-05-30 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  A tech site was doing endurance testing many years back and they manage to write over 2 petabytes to a Samsung 840 Evo before a power outage killed the SSD. And 840s were infamous for their poor write endurance and longevity, according to their specs that is. First gen TLC and all that. I haven't seen any recent longevity tests because everyone gave up. Even the low end name brand drives pretty much only die to manufacturing defects.
  
  Several years ago some datacenter, I think Google, wrote a blog about using consumer grade MLC SSDs with customer firmware in production. Their experience was that SSD lasted as long as spinning rust if you measured the drives in data written. It is true that the SSDs didn't last as long according to the wall clock, but that's only because they could write 100x faster. Their mentality was that if they got to choose between two drives that would die after 1PiB written, they'd choose the faster one that uses less power and is much less likely to die to other reasons.
9. Re:Who uses hard drives? by swb · 2018-05-30 06:31 · Score: 1
  
  I remember that test and another one that used an 850 Pro with similar results.
  I kept waiting for someone to gut the enterprise storage market by putting out cheap, flash based storage devices but it never happened. I still see prices in the thousands for "read intensive" SSDs.
dd crashes often? by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:03 · Score: 0

Noticed this little paragraph in the paper:
Despite being well tested, dd often crashes or hangs
indefinitely during use. By monitoring dd in a separate process,
errors can be quickly intercepted and logged.
I've never heard of dd acting like that, is this well known?
So speakers are a problem now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:25 · Score: 0

I guess turn off your sound, tape over your camera, and disable your mic and you'll be fine for now with your computer. With so many auto ads and videos I rarely have my speakers enabled anyway.
1. Re:So speakers are a problem now by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 05:32 · Score: 0
  
  Do you let any random site you visit run javascript code? Only time
  I see ads is when a website has the ad served via a static image. Of course I also use a host file.
That's why WTC7 collapsed! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:26 · Score: 0

Damn rock and roll music made the building implode, mystery solved. ae911truth dot org
Still, not as bad as the ending by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 21:37 · Score: 0

https://regmedia.co.uk/2018/05...
Talk about getting too rolling stoned...
So that's what's been going on by Chrisq · 2018-05-29 22:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

So that's what's been going on in the US embasies
1. Re:So that's what's been going on by sabbede · 2018-05-30 00:07 · Score: 2
  
  I had the same idea! Yesterday I was thinking that maybe the sonic attacks were intended to have some effect other than deafness, but the equipment was miscalibrated. Now here's something that might point to the intended effect.
  Regardless of what the intended effect might be, I do have to wonder how many embassies might be under the influence of properly calibrated equipment, should that be the case.
Re:Heil Hillary as mandated by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 22:54 · Score: 0

Nazis were Authoritarian like Trump, but were strangely supported on the right in the US.
Main thing though: not about left or right, it's about the attitudes that can lead to the jack-boots and death squads (and the corruption and other shitty things that can happen before that point).
Nazis, Pinochet, Stalin's Russia, Taliban, Kmer Rouge, Fascism, every one was Authoritarian to the extreme.
Ukraine is a modern example that has had to deal with this shit from both the left and the right is short succession.
Right now, in North America, the threat is largest on the right.
Not new behavior by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:13 · Score: 0

I work in storage, we have done some pretty odd testing - you can cause some pretty nasty performance impacts on enterprise grade storage with spinning media through the same acoustic methods
Destructive resonances by drdread66 · 2018-05-29 23:14 · Score: 3, Informative

I saw a related phenomenon in ~2006. My employer was developing some software for a DoD system. Everything worked great in our lab but weird things happened when installed on the servers that the Government bought. It took us *months* to figure out that the problem was a resonance between the hard drives and the cooling fans. After an hour or so of running, the drives would stop working.
We contacted the manufacturer of the hardware and they (a) replaced the fans with fans of a different RPM and (b) isolated the fans with rubber mounts. The problem disappeared immediately and never returned.
1. Re:Destructive resonances by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 03:33 · Score: 0
  
  That was really scrumptious and got me all hot and bothered.
  Please write more of the military government contract stories. I want to know everything!
2. Re:Destructive resonances by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 04:36 · Score: 0
  
  On a tangentially related subject, when I was at Apple on iCloud, we had an issue of FusionIO cards in our Oracle Databases that kept getting nuked at a slightly higher than expected failure rate, because of EM radiation coming off of the HP Pizzabox motherboards. Maybe it was the CPU or SouthBridge, idunno, but the solution was a nice high-tech redesign to incorporate shielding in to the cards...
  Or Tin Foil. We used TinFoil until replacement cards were delivered.
Shouting in the datacenter by ccool · 2018-05-29 23:20 · Score: 4, Informative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm surprised no one mentioned this link before...
1. Re:Shouting in the datacenter by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-29 23:31 · Score: 0
  
  I came here hoping to see this video referenced.
  I was not disappointed.
2. Re:Shouting in the datacenter by LinuxIsGarbage · 2018-05-30 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  You mean like this post almost two hours before yours?
3. Re:Shouting in the datacenter by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-31 09:24 · Score: 0
  
  Yes but providing the title or topic of the video gets bonus points.
Oh, that speaker? by CaptainDork · 2018-05-30 00:11 · Score: 1

That speaker sings lullabies to your computer while guarding against malware and detecting Russian interference in elections.
Free trial, right?

--
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Quick! by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 00:24 · Score: 0

We have to alert the guy using magnetic HDDs!
Cuba Embassy Riddle Explained by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 00:28 · Score: 0

This might be why diplomats and others in the Cuba Embassy have had headaches and hearing loss....
Re:Heil Hillary as mandated by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 01:42 · Score: 0

The threat is the US military industrial complex, NATO, the pro-Israel lobby, and billionaires owning almost all the entire media.
Human rights and progressive values have been used as pretexts to kill and wage war, e.g. NATO teaming up with terrorists to rape Libya in 2011, or humanitarian missiles in Syria this year. Given this is the method now used, it doesn't matter which way goes the political circus. The US (or France or UK) can act like Nazis in a way compatible with "leftist" radical anti-racism and anti-sexism if need be. It can also act like Nazis if Republicans are in power, but this doesn't matter.
Funny how Trump tried to get out of Syria by promising US troops would be out real soon. If I were a USian I would have voted Sanders (who's still too pro Israel, pro war by the way), then Trump because I prefer to vote for a racist that speaks against war rather than an anti-racist SJW-compatible candidate that speaks for war. Of course Trump's antiwar stance has fallen very flat, maybe because weapons business trumps his conscience, or he's easily manipulated ("dead babies made my daughter cry"), or he's only a President.
Hard drive as a speaker by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 02:11 · Score: 0

You might enjoy this one, called "HDD Speaker(tune up)" :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVoPrvjvSKs
I knew that blue hedgehog wasn't to be trusted by rsilvergun · 2018-05-30 02:18 · Score: 1

blast processing indeed... This goes all the way to the top of plant Mobius. Wait... mobius don't have tops. Or is it mobii?

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My system is secure! by gweihir · 2018-05-30 05:49 · Score: 1

a) I have mostly SSDs and
b) Classical earbuds are not able to pump out that much. Also do not make you a dick by disturbing the neighbors.

--
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Re:Heil Hillary as mandated by Anonymous Coward · 2018-05-30 12:13 · Score: 0

Right now, in North America, the threat is largest on the right.
And we know who you are.
Flash Drives by Anonymous Coward · 2018-06-12 02:15 · Score: 0

You can also find flash drives or something like that on https://logousb.com/