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Sonic Attacks Can Interrupt HDD Recording

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Chris Anderson
May 30, 2018

Interesting: 

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.

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John Scanlan
May 30, 2018
IPVM • IPVMU Certified

Thanks for posting Chris.

The attack used a speaker hanging from a ceiling that rested about four inches above the surveillance system’s HDD

Ensuring that the DVR/NVR is not installed under a sub-woofer should prevent this possibility. Having speakers within close proximity to any device with a HDD is a bad idea, as many speakers have magnets in them.

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May 30, 2018
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