Again in August 2022, Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen informed the attention-grabbing story of how a sure music was getting programs to crash. Because it seems, the music in query was Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation which might be inflicting 2.5-inch 5400 RPM laptop computer laborious disk drives (HDDs) to go haywire and crash as sure frequencies performed within the music would match with the resonant frequency of the HDDs.

The story didn’t reveal what these frequencies had been, however we famous final time, based mostly on out there analysis data, that onerous drives would vibrate wherever between 0 and 5,000 Hz with peaks at 12.5, 87.5, 1100, 1450, 1700, and 1850 Hz, so a few of these frequency factors should have aligned that triggered the resonance.

Only a day after this, the music was listed as an official exploit by the MITRE and was validated and tracked underneath ID CVE-2022-38392, which, as humorous because it sounds, primarily makes listening to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation a cyber risk.

Microsoft has lengthy patched this downside and therefore it shouldn’t be a motive for fear. Apart from, most fashionable programs could be unaffected anyway, as they run SSDs that aren’t mechanical in nature like HDDs.

Afterward, Chen additionally shared how Microsoft understood that the utilization of heavier 3.5-inch HDDs would trigger a dampening impact that prevented this downside. Nonetheless, that wasn’t a possible answer since laptops require smaller and lighter storage. So, a software program method was taken to mitigate the difficulty through the utilization of APO or Audio Processing Objects.

For these questioning how APO helped, they primarily helped filter or lower out these troublesome frequencies within the music as APO is actually software-based DSP or digital sign processing.

Earlier this week, Raymond Chen shared the third a part of this story, explaining how an replace to Home windows APO operations almost broke laptops, once more.

Because it seems, after Home windows 7, Microsoft added an possibility to show off all filtering through APO utilizing the “Disable all audio enhancements” setting, and this in flip additionally disabled the filters particularly set for the Janet Jackson music.

Fortunately, upon request, an exception was granted for this or else we’d have had loads of fashionable Home windows 8.1, Home windows 10, and even early Home windows 11 PCs crashing had somebody disabled the APO performance, trigger let’s face it, sound settings aren’t the very first thing a person would consider if a system started misbehaving and malfunctioning.

This example type of is much like how automated BitLocker on Home windows 11 24H2 is allegedly resulting in information lack of unaware and unprepared customers.

Supply: Microsoft