hello guys and gals me moodahar and what
if I told you you could actually crash
your hard drive through a song now of
course you know what I love about
computers ladies and gentlemen the wild
wacky stuff that you can actually do
with them now of course this was
revealed four days ago by a Microsoft
security researcher and it was so goofy
that I wanted to share it with you now
ladies and gentlemen way back in the day
actually still to this day we still have
hard disk drives in our computer I want
to ask you a question do you have a hard
drive in your computer okay do you well
if you have a gaming computer you
probably have different types of hard
drives you probably have an SSD that
makes your games load up faster ssds
typically do not have moving parts and
by typically not have moving Parts we're
talking no part at all they're typically
just like flash memory cells and of
course it's why they have kind of a
limited lifespan all right it's gotten
better over the years now you can load
things up really fast and easy but what
if you don't want to buy an expensive
ssds what if you want to save some money
get like four terabytes of space and
have a heart you can buy a standard
magnetic hard drive now these magnetic
hard drives typically consist of
platters they consist of moving Parts
they consist of magnets if you will and
they rotate at a certain rounds per
minute they actually have like you know
RPM notations too 5400 sometimes a
little less sometimes a little bit more
and of course these hard disk drive
serve as pretty cheap Cold Storage
basically if you have like a terabyte
SSD but you want to store you know your
music files your movies on bigger drives
things I don't need that fast access you
can just store them on a typical hard
disk drive as well now of course it came
out that way back in the Windows XP era
Now ladies and gentlemen if you don't
remember Windows XP Windows XP is one of
the finest operating systems that came
out but back during the Windows XP era
there were a lot of laptops and a lot of
these laptops came with hard disk drives
one in particular that had a certain
problem regarding a song Now what song
ladies and gentlemen a Janet Jackson
Rhythm Nation Now ladies and gentlemen
this song is nothing special in
particular you know I'm not a huge uh
Jackson fan but this song actually had
certain oscillations in it certain uh I
guess you could say natural resonant
frequencies which caused hard drives to
crash reading into this research it
literally said one Discovery during the
investigation is that playing the music
video also crashed some of their
competitors laptops and then they
discovered something really weird
playing the music video on one laptop
caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash
even though that other laptop wasn't
playing the video what's going on well
apparently that exact song we just
looked at contained a natural resonant
frequency for a 5400 RPM laptop drive
that multiple manufacturers used when
you're building a computer a lot of
these components are often shared from
the same batch they're often shared from
the same manufacturer you know they'll
look for the graphic component from
Nvidia AMD Intel to look for the
processor from Intel and AMD and they'll
look from the look of the hard drive
from a standard component manufacturer
as well whether it be like Seagate
Kingston you name it they'll just go to
these companies get a get get hard
drives on the bulk on the cheap and use
them for manufacturing and of course
this one specific model crashed because
the actual oscillations from this song
crashed and collided with the drive
enough to cause a denial of service
failure a certain 5400 RPM OEM hard
drive as shipped with laptop PCS in 2005
no less you know the year that I think
the Xbox 360 came out allows physically
proximate attackers to cause a denial of
service malfunction and system Crash
from the Rhythm Nation music video now
this sounds like the most goofiest
hacker you could have ever imagined
from Hollywood you know those scenes
where the hacker does some like wild
stuff to crash and deny everything this
is like straight up Watchdogs territory
where all you needed was one song and
the right speaker systems to literally
crash a drive well ladies and gentlemen
if you actually wanted to understand how
oscillations and vibrations can really
cause some problems instead of one drive
imagine an entire bridge going down now
this is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and if
you look at it real carefully it's a two
minute video that one can watch where
this bridge is literally shaking on its
foundations now you might be wondering
whoa damn who's gonna drive down there
well the reason why this is occurring
and oh God I really hope that person is
going to be safe and dandy I mean that
car stuck out there in the lone
Wilderness Jesus Christ but what was
causing this was vibrations and
oscillations and if you're ever an
engineering student or a physics student
you probably have seen this it serves as
an incredibly cautionary tale because of
the wind causing vibrations this bridge
wasn't gonna make it imagine being the
lead engineer they call you up on your
cell phone or whatever your phone I mean
this is the 40s so I mean they're
literally telegraphing you and you get
the telegraph that and it tells you yo
son
guess what's happening to the bridge of
course the bridge completely collapsed
and it caused a lot of damage literally
because of its initial design and that
is why we don't design bridges in this
fashion because the wind vibrations can
absolutely cause them to topple over so
you might be like whoa but muda what did
they do well to understand the way that
the manufacturer in this case worked
around it was they added custom filters
in the audio pipeline Hardware wise and
I believe at some point even a software
situation too where they literally
removed those frequencies from this one
song and any other song that could have
caused it now ladies and gentlemen if
this still exists somewhere it could
cause a chance for another 2005 laptop
to face some problems you know I found
this to be really hilarious because to
be honest with you all right I didn't
even believe this to be a thing this
vulnerability just got announced as sort
of an anecdotal story four days ago by
Raymond Chen and it's hilarious to
understand this is one of the many bugs
and features that could have actually
caused computers back in the day to fail
laptops could you imagine working on
like an important project and all of a
sudden Tom comes in listening to Janet
Jackson
is your system because they're playing
it out loud yeah this was a reality back
in the day and it's something that you
could expect from hard drives that of
course could be tampered with by
vibrations happening near them ladies
and gentlemen computers are a weird
story and this one is just a goofy tale
to talk about now are you under threat
from this happening to you again if
Graham Graham still has a 2005 ThinkPad
sitting around with this specific drive
in it and all of a sudden you got the
jonesing for some Janet Jackson maybe
you might be able to crash Graham
Graham's laptop but in that case just by
Graham where I have a cheapo smartphone
or a cheap tablet and she'll never have
to worry about it ever being crashed
again this is just one of those goofy
stories one can look at and laugh at
because 2005 was a different time indeed
and it was a time when Windows XP users
specifically on laptops could absolutely
be tampered with just by one song maybe
there is that one mystery song that
exists on Spotify that could in fact
cause this through some use of speaker
systems and some old tier hard drive
still sitting in laptops but as far as I
know most modern day laptops come with
ssds built into them most MacBooks come
with ssds or flash memory built into
them the day of old mechanical hard
drives is dying so hopefully you'll
never have to come across this but yeah
I wanted to talk about it because it was
funny as hell and it made me laugh and I
figured I could share it with you
because it's a nice little interesting
thing to learn about physics some
engineering and some computer Ingenuity
along the way this is mimura and
tomorrow we're covering Ted the caver I
am out