Sonic attack breaks laptops by playing damaging sound through speakers

Researchers have discovered a way to crash a person’s desktop or laptop computer simply by playing a sound through the device’s speakers.

Attackers could potentially use the technique to disrupt surveillance systems and sabotage medical devices.

Playing the sonic and ultrasonic sounds through the built-in speakers for as little as 12 seconds was enough to interfere with a hard drive through high-frequency vibrations.

The researchers from the University of Michigan in the US and Zhejiang University in China detailed their findings in a paper titled Blue Note: How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems.

“Intentional acoustic interference causes unusual errors in the mechanics of magnetic hard disk drives in desktop and laptop computers, leading to damage to integrity and availability in both hardware and software,” the paper states.

The discovery is the latest in a long line of methods available to attackers to crash devices remotely, which include symbols and messages sent by text message or other messaging apps.

Recent bug discoveries include a message containing a white flag emoji, a ‘0’ and a rainbow emoji that is capable of crashing an iPhone, as well as a “text bomb” containing a single character from Telugu – a language native to India and spoken by about 70 million people.

The latest attack works through causing vibrations in the computer that disrupt the internal workings of hard disk drives to the point they are unable to write data.

The researchers proposed ways to protect against any potential attacks, which included noise-dampening materials in the computer and software updates that recognised and prevented the sound from being played.