The more than 30-year-old song “Rythm Nation” by Janet Jackson was able to reproducibly crash certain laptops years ago and is now probably the first to be given a CVE designation for a known vulnerability. Windows developer Raymond Chen made this public in a blog entry and referred to an unnamed large laptop manufacturer as the source. He once reported to Microsoft’s support for Windows XP after the risk of the song had been discovered. When played on certain models, it caused a crash not only on those, but even on devices that were just nearby. This also happened with laptops from other manufacturers.
The internet is full of hot IT news and stale Pr0n. In between there are always gems that are too good for /dev/null.
Countermeasure implemented years ago
In what is undoubtedly a laborious search for the cause, after which those responsible have had more than enough of “Rythm Nation“, it was then determined that the song contains a natural resonant frequency that becomes a problem for hard drives that run at 5400 rpm. However, this only became a problem with laptops. Ultimately, the manufacturer had no other choice help than adding a filter to the audio line that detects and removes the interfering frequencies when the song is played.The whole thing happened “many years ago” and probably no one remembers why this filter is there, says Chen More details on the incident he does not name in the short article.
Under the designation CVE-2022-38392 the error is now also recognized as a vulnerability, the description states that the affected models were delivered around 2005. There it is said that in the case of attacks from close range, the devices could be made to crash using the song and the contained resonance frequency. Thanks to the filter, however, the danger should no longer exist for a long time. Nevertheless will the song Better not included here – instead, to illustrate the dangers of resonance frequencies, a video of the collapse of the Tacoma-Narrows Bridge in 1940.
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Collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
(What: Barney Elliot)
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