Security researchers from the University of Michigan and Zhejian University in China have published a paper on an
acoustic attack vector that could crash a
mechanical hard drive, leading to damage for both the hardware and software. The attack does not require fancy equipment, either—an attacker could use regular, built-in speakers or nearby emitters to cause persistent errors on the target system.
"Our experiments show that audible sound causes the head stack assembly to vibrate outside of operational bounds; ultrasonic sound causes false positives in the shock sensor, which is designed to prevent a head crash. The problem poses a challenge for legacy magnetic disks that remain stubbornly common in safety critical applications such as medical devices and other highly utilized systems difficult to sunset," the researchers state in their paper.