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A laptop hard drive model could crash when exposed to a certain audio frequency
- sieabahlpark 4y ago
- urthor 4y agohttps://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=106994 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220816-00/?p=10...
- ageitgey 4y agoMoral: Computers are hard
- Adjudicator52 4y agoReminds me of this https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/my-hardest-bug-ever https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/my-hardest-bug-eve...
- hermitdev 4y ago_electronics_ are hard. I always remember back to one of my electrical engineering labs... The oscilloscopes were sensitive enough that someone walking past them was visible on the scope. Really, any motion near it. It was especially funny when we were trying to figure out why a particular experiment wasn't working (we couldn't pick up any signal from our circuit at all), yet we could pick up noise from movement around the scope. Turns out the scope had a faulty BNC connector... It was very frustrating at the time, but many humorous memories in the decades since.
- twic 4y agoWith the CVE date being a day after this blog post, and ~17 years after the actual vulnerability. Filing a CVE for this seems like a bit of a cheap gag (and i enjoy cheap gags). Is there any real practical value in filing a CVE with this little detail, this long after the fact?
- withinboredom 4y agoMaybe manufacturers will check to see if they are still vulnerable or enterprises using old technology. If it were just a blog post, nobody would probably know about it.
- kreig 4y agoHistorical records should never be underestimated just by assuming they don't look too "practical" nowadays.
- secondcoming 4y agoA phone we were developing could be made crash by taking a photo of it with a Xenon flash camera
- eddyg 4y agoThe photoelectric effect (where metals emit electrons when hit by light); see https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/xenon-death-flash-a-free-physics-lesson/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/xenon-death-flash-a-free-ph...
- mnw21cam 4y agoYou don't even need that. Xenon flash tubes require quite a powerful surge of high voltage electricity, and it's common for them to emit considerable amounts of radio-frequency interference.
- lathiat 4y agoEEVBlog made a video demonstrating that and explaining it generally: https://youtu.be/SrDfRCi1UV0 https://youtu.be/SrDfRCi1UV0
- acadapter 4y agoThis happened to an earlier version of Raspberry Pi
- secondcoming 4y agoYes the phone used some of the same Broadcom chipset as the (original, I think) Raspberry Pi
- V__ 4y ago> It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used. > The manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback. Does this mean that every machine with a hdd has the same problem? Is it just about finding the right song or do engineers include some kind of dampeners to prevent this?
- dmd 4y agoThere’s a whole chapter in Godel Escher Bach specifically about this! (OK, so it’s supposed to be a metaphor.)
- quickthrower2 4y agoAudiophiles hate this trick
- lupire 4y agoThe weakness is in the specific size and shape of the drive hardware, so the exact resonant frequency would vary a bit.
- porbelm 4y agoBut for the specific production run of hard drives combined with the specific production run of laptop casings etc, with today's manufacturing tolerances, it will be a problem.
- 4y ago
- highwaylights 4y agoSpecifically Rhythm Nation. You might be wondering "does it really matter which Janet Jackson song it is? Is that relevant to HN, or even the CVE?". ... You're welcome.
- rtev 4y agoIt’s considered irresponsible disclosure to publish the hit track proof-of-concept prematurely. You should have waited another 5-10 years.
- highwaylights 4y agoIt's already been 208 years gimme a break! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson%27s_Rhythm_Nation_1814 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Jackson%27s_Rhythm_Natio...
- rtev 4y agoIn my opinion, if a disclosure by a person takes place within their lifetime then it’s too soon.
- prvc 4y agoWell, the specific model of HDD hasn't been mentioned yet as far as I can tell.
- XiS 4y agoAnd don't even think about standing up from your office chair either when using Dell DisplayLink 3100 https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/738618 https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/73861... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voW5kEI7JKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voW5kEI7JKE
- ivolimmen 4y agoI actually have this! It was driving me crazy WHY this happened. I do not have a DELL monitor but some AOC Gaming widescreen thing but to make it more weirder: it only occurs when I am using my laptop not my desktop. Both systems are connected using HDMI to the monitor. Only when I am working on my laptop and I have audio over my HDMI cable using my speakers on my monitor and I walk away my monitor blanks and the sounds stops for 5 seconds...
- Sakos 4y agoThat's interesting. Been getting the same behavior from my Gigabyte M32U monitor from things like disconnecting a different monitor's HDMI cable to my Switch, even though the Gigabyte is only connected to my PC. This seems like the most obvious explanation.
- wink 4y agoWe had that in the office around 2015-16 with one certain combo of chair model + screen model, but I don't remember the specifics. You actually had to let yourself fall into the chair though, it did not trigger when sitting down or standing up.
- Spare_account 4y ago> And I’m sure they put a digital version of a “Do not remove” sticker on that audio filter. (Though I’m worried that in the many years since the workaround was added, nobody remembers why it’s there. Hopefully, their laptops are not still carrying this audio filter to protect against damage to a model of hard drive they are no longer using.) The audio filter is Chesterton's fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
- digitallyfree 4y agoI wonder if the filter was embedded in the firmware of the CODEC's internal DSP (as it should) or simply done via software driver. For the latter it would mean the user would have to download the custom driver from the laptop manufacturer's website to get the fix as a generic driver would not have it. This would also mean that people using Linux distros on that laptop would not get the fix as well. Though in this case the filter would not prevent crashes if the song was played externally, like from another device or over a PA system.
- throw10920 4y agoSomewhat frustratingly, the developers could have avoided it becoming a Chesterton's Fence by putting why the (metaphorical) sticker shouldn't be removed on it. I feel like there's a lot of times when people make labels/verbal advice/laws/comments/whatever saying "don't do X" without saying why you shouldn't do X when there was no reason not to include that information.
- richardfey 4y agochecks date No, it's not April 1st.
- aaron695 4y ago
- drKarl 4y agoWow, did dang really change the title AND the url of this post? Didn't know that was possible!! This post was pointing to mitre.org, now it points to Raymond Chen's blog...
- drKarl 4y agoThe reason I think that matters is that I had originally read the blog post, but I thought it was interesting on its own that there's an actual CVE published!!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dang 4y agoA mod changed the URL and title as the CVE (https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-38392 https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2022-3839...) seems to be largely a gag, and the title formulated by the submitter (as the CVE doesn't have another title) was baity. Btw, this is in the site guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aequitas 4y agoShouting at disks is also a bad idea: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
- AshamedCaptain 4y agoThis is much more credible than saying that the laptop would "crash". During XP era all HDDs already had some builtin error correction. Unless the "song" was affecting the electronics rather than the mechanical parts (which is not impossible but much more unlikely), the only effect the user of the laptop would see is an increase in the correctable read error rate (since it's also highly unlikely that the song would prevent the head from ever reading the correct value 100% of the time), and perhaps a delay due to a retry (which would then always read the correct value, again because of the previous reason).
- CarVac 4y agoReminds me of the self-destructing record for the "perfect" record player from Gödel, Escher, Bach.
- Amedeemus 4y ago
- rthomas6 4y agoTechnically every laptop will crash if you play a sound loud enough
- mecsred 4y agoFor solid state machines I think nearby humans would crash first!
- SketchySeaBeast 4y agoI REALLY appreciate the format of this post. Clear enough for a non-technical individual to understand and brief enough to nearly guarantee being worth the time.
- vivegi 4y agoNikola Tesla had claimed that a resonance oscillator that he had built was capable of causing earthquakes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator Even though MythBusters team tried to replicate this in one of their episodes and concluded the claim to be false, the OP shows that resonance is a real problem with spinning disks.