Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives

Mohammad Shahrad, Arsalan Mosenia, Liwei Song, Mung Chiang, David Wentzlaff, Prateek Mittal

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages34-39
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450359962
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 15 2018
Event2nd Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, ASHES 2018, in conjunction with the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018 - Toronto, Canada
Duration: Oct 19 2018 → …

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)1543-7221

Other

Other2nd Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, ASHES 2018, in conjunction with the 25th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, CCS 2018
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityToronto
Period10/19/18 → …

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Computer Networks and Communications

Keywords

  • Acoustic resonance
  • CCTV DVR
  • Denial of service (DoS)
  • Hard disk drive (HDD)
  • Hardware reliability

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