TY - GEN
T1 - Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives
AU - Shahrad, Mohammad
AU - Mosenia, Arsalan
AU - Song, Liwei
AU - Chiang, Mung
AU - Wentzlaff, David
AU - Mittal, Prateek
PY - 2018/10/15
Y1 - 2018/10/15
N2 - Bridging concepts from information security and resonance theory, we propose a novel denial of service attack against hard disk drives (HDDs). In this attack, acoustic signals are used to cause rotational vibrations in HDD platters in an attempt to create failures in read/write operations, ultimately halting the correct operation of HDDs. We perform a comprehensive examination of multiple HDDs to characterize the attack and show the feasibility of the attack in two real-world systems, namely, surveillance devices and personal computers. Our attack highlights an overlooked security vulnerability of HDDs, introducing a new threat that can potentially endanger the security of numerous systems.
AB - Bridging concepts from information security and resonance theory, we propose a novel denial of service attack against hard disk drives (HDDs). In this attack, acoustic signals are used to cause rotational vibrations in HDD platters in an attempt to create failures in read/write operations, ultimately halting the correct operation of HDDs. We perform a comprehensive examination of multiple HDDs to characterize the attack and show the feasibility of the attack in two real-world systems, namely, surveillance devices and personal computers. Our attack highlights an overlooked security vulnerability of HDDs, introducing a new threat that can potentially endanger the security of numerous systems.
KW - Acoustic resonance
KW - CCTV DVR
KW - Denial of service (DoS)
KW - Hard disk drive (HDD)
KW - Hardware reliability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85056717719&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85056717719&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3266444.3266448
DO - 10.1145/3266444.3266448
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85056717719
T3 - Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
SP - 34
EP - 39
BT - ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2nd Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, ASHES 2018, in conjunction with the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018
Y2 - 19 October 2018
ER -