back to article Want to bring down that pesky drone? Try the power of sound

Hacking sensors isn’t as big an area of research as hacking operating systems and firmware, but the results of simple physical hacks can be far-reaching. In a talk at Enigma 2017 Yongdae Kim, professor in the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Graduate School of Information Security, showed how active and …

  1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    more distant attacks could be achieved by ramping up the power output.

    You can get pretty good mileage (literally) by using a suitably sized parabolic dish.

    1. Whitter
      Happy

      Re: more distant attacks could be achieved by ramping up the power output.

      Old school sound mirrors always make me smile!

      http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/soundmirrors/locations/denge/

    2. Anonymous Blowhard

      Re: more distant attacks could be achieved by ramping up the power output.

      Or you could mount your transducer on your own drone and use it to disable other drones in flight.

      1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

        Re: more distant attacks could be achieved by ramping up the power output.

        Or you could mount your transducer on your own drone and use it to disable other drones in flight.

        Drone? No. Model fighter aircraft - yes. Forward facing and with a camera onboard. Bring the fun on.

        Jokes aside, if you are going to attack other people's kit it may be armed too so you might as well attack with something that:

        1. moves significantly faster so that the victim cannot fire back effectively - it cannot track you and keep the defensive weapons locked on you if you are flying at the speed of a good model.

        2. has inherent aerodynamic stability and does not depend on gyros to stay in the air

        3. It is much more fun to fly a Mig-25 or Spitfire replica and take out drones than to fly yet another boring quadcopter

        4. If the audio method of dealing with it does not work, just do a Gastello on the fecker. Most bigger models will survive a close and personal encounter with a drone. The drone will not.

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: more distant attacks could be achieved by ramping up the power output.

      "using a suitably sized parabolic dish"

      By using multiple speakers, you could create a somewhat coherent beam of sound. I'd expect this to be a 'military grade' version.

      a bit more damping/averaging/noise-canceling on the drone side might fix it, though. "Fix it in software".

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "[...] you could simply cover the transparent sections of the device in masking tape. "

    It is possible that the transparent section is a safety feature so that its operation can be visually confirmed.

    1. frank ly

      Yes, and the transparent/visible section was there for years (for rate adjustment and observation) before they put an optical sensor in it. It would be easy enough to put another section lower down to observe the flow rate while having an optically sealed monitoring section above that.

    2. Anonymous Blowhard

      "It is possible that the transparent section is a safety feature so that its operation can be visually confirmed."

      I agree, you're probably going to have to redesign the unit so that the sensors are masked from external light sources and any transparent areas, e.g. for visual confirmation of drip flow, are separated.

      Designers are also going to have to build in "tamper alarms" that trigger when spurious light sources are shone onto sensors; the actual light source for the sensor could also use coded pulses to verify that the sensor is "seeing" the correct light source.

      And all this is going to add to the cost of medical equipment and, given that medical budgets are not infinite, reduce the availability to patients.

      1. Robert Helpmann??
        Boffin

        I agree, you're probably going to have to redesign the unit so that the sensors are masked from external light sources and any transparent areas, e.g. for visual confirmation of drip flow, are separated.

        Depends on how the sensor works. If it is only sensitive to a narrow set of colors, then applying film that just blocks that range should allow visual confirmation while preventing this particular hack. Even if it is not, if you are going through the trouble of a redesign I would think it would be easier to update sensors than change everything else.

    3. Adam 1

      It's all about understanding your threat model. What is the bigger threat? A misdose by a fat fingered health professional (or medical researcher) or by some lone wolf with a laser pointer on the roof of an adjacent building? The attack vector is interesting and I'd definitely watch the next Bourne if they used it as part of the plotline. There are plenty of IoT health device security issues with real world risk from default passwords to blindly trusting unencrypted instructions over WiFi or Bluetooth.

  3. David Roberts

    TV crime series plot......

    ....in 3 2 1......

    This looks like a scarily easy and undetectable way to screw with someones medication.

    Include an optical sensor in the monitor which permanently changes colour when laser blasted?

    Or just have it self dimming like prescription sun glasses?

    Presumably the laser would have to be on the sensor for a long time to seriously disrupt medication.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player X"

      In the days of vinyl you could buy a 22rpm record that would stress test your pick up's abilities to follow a record's groove faithfully. One of the tests was a set of sounds designed to find the vibration point at which the stylus would jump out of the groove.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player X"

        Erratum: 33rpm

        Eyesight is not so good these days even on a 19 inch screen. The retina of one eye was buckled by a vein occlusion. Makes lines of text look like the paper has just come off the printer sprockets. That is impossible to correct physically - although the brain is getting better at smoothing the ripples with whatever processing algorithm it uses.

  5. TonyWilk

    A blast from the past...

    Laser pointers and sensors has been a 'hack' for years, notably in coin payout mechanisms where a laser pointer would simply flood the has-a-coin-come-out opto on old feed-hopper mechanisms.

    We first saw this very soon after the first cheap laser pointers appeared.

    Interesting audio attack tho.

    Did find this lecture vid from 2015... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1FcDTeOSVI

  6. W4YBO

    Phased audio array

    I2R is easy. Anybody can do that. Combine this tech with something along the line of LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) with automatic tracking, and then you've got something.

  7. AceRimmer

    muad'dib

    EOF

    1. P. Lee
      Coat

      Re: muad'dib

      A mouse with laser beams!

      Good way to fill the stills!

    2. Mephistro

      Re: muad'dib

      The 'sonic weapon' (weirding module) only appears in the film, and in my opinion it was a quite flakey change. In the book, the "Weirding Way" was just a martial art developed by the Bene Gesserit, which makes more sense than the sonic weapon.

      Anyway, thanks for reminding me of these books. The last time I read them was seventeen years ago, and I think it's about time for a refresh!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    But why

    would somebody on a dip be attached to a drone?

  9. WraithCadmus
    Devil

    Sonic Weaponry?

    This quiet offends Slaanesh

    THINGS WILL GET LOUD NOW

    Icon: More of a Khornate Daemon

    1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      Re: Sonic Weaponry?

      Just play Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call."

      1. W4YBO

        Re: Sonic Weaponry?

        "Just play Slim Whitman's 'Indian Love Call.'"

        I thought that only worked on Martians, and maybe Tim Burton.

  10. martinusher Silver badge

    There's already very efficient sound projectors

    The way to project sound at a distance is to fire off ultrasonic beams and adjust the point where they converge, and so interfere, to get the desired loud noise. Its a technique that's available commercially, its used against groups of people and offshore pirates.

    1. Allan George Dyer

      Re: There's already very efficient sound projectors

      And kidney stones?

  11. Medical Cynic

    Risk of death

    "It is possible that the transparent section is a safety feature so that its operation can be visually confirmed."

    Yes indeed. You need to be able to see an air-fluid level to confirm there is fluid going into the veins, rather than air.

    Risk of fatal air embolism otherwise.

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