4 ms·

The accelerometers that protect the average hard drive are easily subverted for this purpose.

• sandworm101 6mo ago
  There is something better. The little sensor that maintains the distance between the spinning platter and the armature is sensitive enough to be a reasonable microphone. But it is inside a heavy metal box (the HDD) so you do need to shout at it. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/24 https://physics.aps.org/articles/v12/24 >> They tapped into the feedback system that helps control the position of the read head above the magnetic disk. When the head is buffeted by sound waves, the vibrations are reflected in the voltage signal produced by the drive’s position sensors. By reading this signal, Fu and his colleagues were able to make high-quality recordings of people speaking near the drive.
  • fennecbutt 6mo ago
    Good old video of a guy shouting in a data center https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4?si=ebFDFYufOdNIU9av https://youtu.be/tDacjrSCeq4?si=ebFDFYufOdNIU9av
  • ok_dad 6mo ago
    The NSA could turn on your flip phones mic thirty years ago without you knowing, I don’t think they needed to do all that fancy stuff with hard drives. That’s just research that they funded to cover up the fact that they owned every computing device on the planet for a while.