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by woliveirajr 3379 days ago
I remember my early days of computers (not as old as some folks here, I know) when there was an intense debate on whether a software could cause damage to some hardware.

I remember programing a small .asm that would move the head of a floppy to a farther point and it stoped working. Probably not all models would fail, but one particular brand did.

Then a intense debate followed that I was wrong. Never talked about it again.

Fast-forward, now we have news that nuclear programs had malfunctions caused by cyber-attacks. Ok, not exactly the same "software doesn't damage hardware" we talked back then, but...

I'm willing to consider that using software to make some catware cause damages to the hardware should be acceptable too :D

7 comments

> "software doesn't damage hardware" [not parent's claim]

Isn't this trivially false?

Of course we can design hardware (+ firmware) that allows software to damage or irrevocably destroy it.

So even if we're not willing to accept that alone, it surely follows that some hardware (+ firmware) will (accidentally) be physically vulnerable to malicious software?

I think so. The point was that you couldn't make a hardware go beyond its limits (video cards, monitors, HDD, keyboards, CD-ROMs)... then I lost my patience and stopped arguing. Funny that at those times, "hardware guide" books were a thing, and one of my opponents was one big writer in my country. Never heard of him anymore, by the way.
(showing my age here)

I also recall that on early IBM PCs with a monochrome monitor and a Hercules graphics card, it was possible to set the refresh rate to zero and toast the monitor.

I remember trying to prove that this was impossible... Until I killed a floppy reader.

But now? When microcode can be patched? I'm waiting for tamperproof ransomware, that holds your hardware as well as your data as the hostage.

CPU microcode is volatile, for what it's worth. Patching it only lasts until the machine is powered off.

Firmware in other platform devices, however, may be vulnerable to modification -- BIOS, network adapter, video card, hard disk...

> there was an intense debate on whether a software could cause damage to some hardware.

Ever broken a monitor with a bad X config?

>when there was an intense debate on whether a software could cause damage to some hardware.

A more recent debate (TL;DR: yes, software can cause damage to hardware): https://superuser.com/questions/313850/

As the person who wrote the accepted answer to that question, I'm flattered to see it linked here. (I'm also a bit embarrassed at reading some of my older rambling-style writing, but nothing beats experience :)

While my forray into malicious floppy disks didn't end with physical damage, I did manage to make one similar to DBAN. If you booted the computer with the floppy inserted, all drives would be formatted instantly, without any user input.

Fortunately, even in highschool​ I realized they probably imaged the school machines anyways. Probably...

Mine answer is there too but with much less points, the kill FDD thing :)
Previous related discussion (about the new MacBooks having their speakers blown out when running Bootcamp) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13063325
This actually happened to me, but I was on i3 and using pactl to set audio volume. I'd given my laptop to someone and they increased the volume to 300% or so and my right speaker blew.
Linux has had a fair number of video drivers that damage monitors due to oddball timing issues.
> when there was an intense debate on whether a software could cause damage to some hardware.

In the days of C64 and Amiga you could safely say "No".

Once there was a basic rewritable input/output system (BIOS), the answer changed to "Yes". Remember the CIH virus?

> In the days of C64 and Amiga you could safely say "No".

Goes back even further than that. It's probably always been possible, but maybe it was harder on timeshared systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke#Commodore_PET

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke#Commodore_1541_Dis...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke#Commodore_Amiga

Never heard of those "killer pokes" before. Thank you.