Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives

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

doi:10.1145/3266444.3266448

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 proceeding › Conference contribution

7 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 language	English (US)
Title of host publication	ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Pages	34-39
Number of pages	6
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450359962
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3266444.3266448
State	Published - Oct 15 2018
Event	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 - Toronto, Canada Duration: Oct 19 2018 → …

Publication series

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

Other

Other	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
Country/Territory	Canada
City	Toronto
Period	10/19/18 → …

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

Access to Document

10.1145/3266444.3266448

Cite this

Shahrad, M., Mosenia, A., Song, L., Chiang, M., Wentzlaff, D., & Mittal, P. (2018). Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives. In ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018 (pp. 34-39). (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3266444.3266448

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title = "Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives",

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.",

keywords = "Acoustic resonance, CCTV DVR, Denial of service (DoS), Hard disk drive (HDD), Hardware reliability",

author = "Mohammad Shahrad and Arsalan Mosenia and Liwei Song and Mung Chiang and David Wentzlaff and Prateek Mittal",

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booktitle = "ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018",

note = "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 ; Conference date: 19-10-2018",

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Shahrad, M, Mosenia, A, Song, L, Chiang, M, Wentzlaff, D & Mittal, P 2018, Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives. in ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 34-39, 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, Toronto, Canada, 10/19/18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3266444.3266448

Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives. / Shahrad, Mohammad; Mosenia, Arsalan; Song, Liwei et al.

ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018. Association for Computing Machinery, 2018. p. 34-39 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

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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.

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Shahrad M, Mosenia A, Song L, Chiang M, Wentzlaff D , Mittal P. Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives. In ASHES 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security, co-located with CCS 2018. Association for Computing Machinery. 2018. p. 34-39. (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security). doi: 10.1145/3266444.3266448

Acoustic denial of service attacks on hard disk drives

Abstract

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All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Keywords

Access to Document

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