Gadgets can be hacked to produce ‘dangerous’ sounds, says researcher

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Many fashionable devices can be hacked to produce deafening and disorienting sounds, analysis has revealed.

Security researcher Matt Wixey discovered a variety of units had little safety to cease themselves being changed into “offensive” low-grade, cyber-weapons.

Mr Wixey examined laptops, cell phones, headphones, a PA system and several other kinds of audio system.

The weaknesses may trigger bodily hurt, harass people or disrupt bigger organisations, he mentioned.

Annoying tones

Mr Wixey, who’s a head of analysis at PWC’s cyber-security observe, mentioned he carried out the experiments as a part of PhD work into the ways in which malware can immediately trigger bodily hurt.

He sought to discover out if the amount and speaker controls of the units may be manipulated to make them produce dangerous excessive and low frequency sounds.

Custom-made viruses, recognized vulnerabilities and different exploits have been used to subvert the units and make them emit the harmful sounds for lengthy durations of time.

“Some attacks leveraged known vulnerabilities in a particular device, which could be done locally or remotely in some cases,” he advised the BBC. “Other attacks would either require proximity to the device, or physical access to it.”

In one assault, Mr Wixey used a program that scanned native wi-fi and Bluetooth networks for weak audio system which it then sought to take over. Any compromised system would then be made to play the weaponised sound.

In some instances, the tones that the vary of devices have been made to emit would solely annoy or disorientate folks, however at sustained ranges the noises have been shut to ranges that might harm listening to, he mentioned.

In one case, the system itself was harmed by the exams because it stopped working after the staff made it emit a variety of sounds over a number of minutes.

Testing was performed in a soundproof room and no people have been concerned in the course of the collection of experiments.

Mr Wixey has been in touch with producers to assist them develop defences that can act if a tool is being made to produce harmful sounds.

The analysis will be detailed throughout a chat on the Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas on 11 August.