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Spreading deadly pathogens under the disguise of popular music (acm.org)
119 points by RansomStark on Nov 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments



The article is about using sound to compromise negative pressure rooms.

From the headline, I was hoping for some kind of memetic Snow Crash type pathogen that infects you when you hear it


There's also the (fictional) visual attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)


Audio pathogen was a plot point in Mark Waid's "Irredeemable" comic series.


A variation on this was a key plot point to Westworld season four.


At first I thought this was click bait, too. But actually..

TL;DR take: Hospitals and labs contain deadly pathogens in regions of lowered air pressure. Sophisticated electronics monitor pressure and control the evacuation system accordingly. Many such spaces have resonant frequencies in the audio range. Ergo, it's possible to play specific tones through an entertainment system to establish significant deviation from the average pressure to fool the sensors, and disrupt the containment. Such tones could be embedded in pop music.

Wow.


> Moreover, we demonstrate our attack at a real-world NPR located in an anonymous bioresearch facility, which is FDA approved and follows CDC guidelines.

Wow indeed. A real-world life hack!


Sony’s back with another root kit?!

Seriously though, that is a cool paper. Helps reinforce how much we need more adversarial testing, even for mundane things.


arxiv link for anyone interested in the full article: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.03688.pdf


Yet another reason why non-headphone/amplified audio in work/public places is terrible.


This is a cool paper! An area I didn’t know existed and how critical security is to this. Really showed me a new thing today. Thanks for posting it


Wow. To summarize: Listening to Taylor Swift (in a NPR) can lead to the destruction of humanity!


To ensure complete obliteration of the planet's life forms, a second attack with Celine Dion is recommended. Refer to the instruction booklet in the box for further details. Or call our hotline at 0-0800-ACME-MUSICAL-PLANET-OBLITERATOR




This is obviously about autotune's evil empire. Right?


Pretty sweet paper. First time the clickbait title actually turned out to be accurate


[flagged]


It isn't really the ACM, the authors got their paper accepted with a funny name, which isn't uncommon practice. Goto considered harmful or programming with bananas and barbed wire also got quite a popularity thanks to their unconventional naming. It is in some cases clearly abused.

Also, you need to read the abstract in full to understand what it's about, a cursory reading feels like buzzwords from completely unrelated domains.

A real title could be "Fooling biolabs security measures with audio waves embedabble in popular music".


I mean,

"(2) We use this finding to design malicious music to create resonance in DPSs, resulting in an overshooting in the DPS's normal pressure readings."

That's already pretty awesome. They could have just led with that. It's straight out of Godel, Escher, Bach :)


Humor is not clickbait. The research shows that it is possible to compromise pathogen storage facilities by embedding specific frequencies/tones in popular music, hence the humorous but not misleading title.


goofy titles have a long history in science,to be fair.


It's not difficult to spread something that's already popular.




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