Researches have demonstrated the effect of malicious sonic and ultrasonic signals on hard drives. Just by playing ultrasonic sound through a victim machine physical damage to hard drives can be caused.
HDDs are exposed to external vibrations where researchers showed that specific acoustic signals can cause interruption in HDDs internal components, which leads to failure of whole system that is running on that drive.
These attacks can be performed using nearby speaker or through the victim’s own speakers if the user is tricked into playing a malicious sound.
By exploiting this disk drive vulnerability, it is demonstrated how attackers could carry out successful real-world attacks against HDDs found in surveillance systems and computers.
You can find out more in a research paper (PDF) titled:
“Blue Note: How Intentional Acoustic Interference Damages Availability and Integrity in Hard Disk Drives and Operating Systems.”
