Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Re: DOS all platforms
From: "Erik van Straten" <emvs.fd.3FB4D11C () cpo tn tudelft nl>
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 17:02:50 +0100
On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:49:48 +0000 Patrick J Okui wrote:
On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Jonathan A. Zdziarski wrote:I heard of a bet going between a student and IBM many many years ago to write a virus to cause physical damage. Apparently the student was able to use harmonic resonance and the hard disk drive to physically shake the PC off the desk.would anyone have links to this article?
I don't, but all my PC's are floor-standing big towers, you're not gonna get us! (you could try a print command though, Epson causes my table to shake). Anyway, it is probably by no way reproducible on any PC. However, I know that using DOS based disk editors, it was possible on some brand/type HDD's to seek to a sector beyond the end of the disk, which would often cause nasty click sounds. I've never damaged HDD's in such a way but can imagine that repeated banging would break stuff. Nevertheless I don't see the purpose. If you have write access to a HDD you can already cause extreme damage by overwriting the first N sectors. Why even bother trying to drop something on the floor? Now that we're at it, you can cause "virtual damage" on most HDD's. If power is removed during sector-write, it is likely that the checksum (usually ECC, which is quite effective BTW), fails. Most HDD diagnostic software will treat it as a permanent bad sector, and usually remap it. Your "drop off the desktop" virus could cause the plug to be pulled :) Some HDD's permit you to write raw sectors (e.g. > 512 bytes with ECC bytes you define). On those, you can create your own "bad sectors". Usually, if you overwrite the particular sector using the regular commands, it turns "good" again. I have "repaired bad sectors" (not remapping) that showed up after a power failure (or someone pulling the plug of a live box) by simply overwriting them using a diskeditor. Erik PS have not spent much time on this subject lately. Some morons and sw manufacturers forced me to waste time and become a security amateur. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- RE: DOS all platforms, (continued)
- RE: DOS all platforms James . Cupps (Jan 23)
- Re: DOS all platforms Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 23)
- Re: DOS all platforms Matt Burnett (Jan 23)
- Re: DOS all platforms Frank Knobbe (Jan 23)
- Re: DOS all platforms Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 23)
- RE: DOS all platforms James . Cupps (Jan 23)
- Re: DOS all platforms Tamas Feher (Jan 24)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Jonathan A. Zdziarski (Jan 24)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 24)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Jeff Kell (Jan 24)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Jeremiah Cornelius (Jan 24)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Patrick J Okui (Jan 25)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Erik van Straten (Jan 25)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Michael Cecil (Jan 25)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms ldreamer (Jan 26)
- Re: Re: DOS all platforms Jonathan A. Zdziarski (Jan 24)
- Re: FW: DOS all platforms Jan Lühr (Jan 27)