Among storage components, hard disk drives (HDDs) have become the most
commonly-used type of non-volatile storage due to their recent technological
advances, including, enhanced energy efficacy and significantly-improved areal
density. Such advances in HDDs have made them an inevitable part of numerous
computing systems, including, personal computers, closed-circuit television
(CCTV) systems, medical bedside monitors, and automated teller machines (ATMs).
Despite the widespread use of HDDs and their critical role in real-world
systems, there exist only a few research studies on the security of HDDs. In
particular, prior research studies have discussed how HDDs can potentially leak
critical private information through acoustic or electromagnetic emanations.
Borrowing theoretical principles from acoustics and mechanics, we propose a
novel denial-of-service (DoS) attack against HDDs that exploits a physical
phenomenon, known as acoustic resonance. We perform a comprehensive examination
of physical characteristics of several HDDs and create acoustic signals that
cause significant vibrations in HDD's internal components. We demonstrate that
such vibrations can negatively influence the performance of HDDs embedded in
real-world systems. We show the feasibility of the proposed attack in two
real-world case studies, namely, personal computers and CCTVs.