Can Software Damage Hardware?

[chrstrbrts]

Hi,

Can software actually damage hardware?

Specifically, can malicious software e.g. viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc. actually damage processors, ICs, gates, multiplexers, etc.?

Thanks.

 

[alkemyst]

Hi,

Can software actually damage hardware?

Specifically, can malicious software e.g. viruses, worms, Trojan horses, etc. actually damage processors, ICs, gates, multiplexers, etc.?

Thanks.

Depending on software and hardware, yes it's possible.

 

[chrstrbrts]

Depending on software and hardware, yes it's possible.

Interesting. Will you explain further, please? Can you cite an example?

 

[LevelSea]

In the microcontroller world, driving a pin that's wired to be in an input from an IC can damage the IC.

 

[alkemyst]

Interesting. Will you explain further, please? Can you cite an example?

Hardware in many modern devices is more protected now, but there were viruses that could overwrite a BIOS (CIH) and others that could bump up voltages and the like.

It's rare as most are looking for data to capture/sell rather than destroy some kids PC.

 

[chrstrbrts]

In the microcontroller world, driving a pin that's wired to be in an input from an IC can damage the IC.

Thanks.

What does it mean to "drive a pin"? I know that a pin on a chip is essentially a connection to the rest of the system where current flows and across which a potential difference exists.

But what does "driving" it mean?

In your example above, the pin is on the microcontroller, and it's supposed to accept an input signal from an integrated chip, yes?

And if you drive that pin (whatever that means) you end up destroying the IC, not the microcontroller, yes?

Can you write software to "drive" pins?

 

[chrstrbrts]

....but there were viruses that could overwrite a BIOS (CIH) and others that could bump up voltages and the like.

You can control internal voltage through software? How?

 

[alkemyst]

You can control internal voltage through software? How?

Same way your BIOS does through software.

 

[slugg]

Software can also have negative effects on hardware, even though it's not considered damage. For example, if you have some kind of infinite loop bug on a background process, it'll eat the battery of a phone in no time. Rapid battery discharge is not a good thing.

To another extreme, if you have a bug in a fly-by-wire mechanical system, you'll definitely damage something. This concept gave birth to the moniker "die-by-wire."

 

[Graze]

Of course software can damage hardware. What kind of question is that!

I will leave this right here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

 

[KWiklund]

Absolutely. Remember software controls not just your personal computer, but also other devices such as automobiles, train systems, rocket controls, medical equipment, etc. A bug in any of those systems can have catastrophic consequences.

For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(spacecraft)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

In the case of your PC, there are some more protections than there used to be, but I have heard of nasty software-related problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke

 

[MongGrel]

Absolutely. Remember software controls not just your personal computer, but also other devices such as automobiles, train systems, rocket controls, medical equipment, etc. A bug in any of those systems can have catastrophic consequences.

For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_(spacecraft)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

In the case of your PC, there are some more protections than there used to be, but I have heard of nasty software-related problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_poke

Was going to mention that myself.

Staged cyber attack reveals vulnerability in power grid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJyWngDco3g

 

[Exophase]

My Chromebook has a blown audio codec chip because it doesn't have protections against enabling conflicting line mux settings, which must have shorted it out. So yeah, it can happen. A lot of hardware designs will go to at least some effort to try to protect against these conditions, though.

 

[chrstrbrts]

Thanks, everyone.

My Chromebook has a blown audio codec chip because it doesn't have protections against enabling conflicting line mux settings, which must have shorted it out.

Incidentally, what's a line mux setting?

 

[Red Squirrel]

I would imagine it would not be hard to load phony firmware on various devices as well, such as a network card or disk controller to essentially brick it. A lot of firmwhere can be updated right from within the OS, so a piece of malicious code could easily do the same. TBH I'm surprised this is not something that you hear about. I guess it's too much work for a virus writer as you'd have to target specific devices in specific environments.

In the micro controller world there was a recent one where FTDI released an update that will actually BRICK non genuine FTDI chips. They got a lot of flack for it though, but the damage is done. Typically the average user is not playing around with micro controllers though.

 

[alkemyst]

I would imagine it would not be hard to load phony firmware on various devices as well, such as a network card or disk controller to essentially brick it. A lot of firmwhere can be updated right from within the OS, so a piece of malicious code could easily do the same. TBH I'm surprised this is not something that you hear about. I guess it's too much work for a virus writer as you'd have to target specific devices in specific environments.

In the micro controller world there was a recent one where FTDI released an update that will actually BRICK non genuine FTDI chips. They got a lot of flack for it though, but the damage is done. Typically the average user is not playing around with micro controllers though.

This has happened with other things too. Usually a ton of whatever is made in China / Et Al and for some of the chips they hardcode a vendor into it.

Sometimes they are burned slightly different. What usually happens is the vendor of the branded chip blocks non-branded versions; but if the reverse is tried sometimes the update is possible and it bricks the device.

 

[postmortemIA]

yes, it can be done many different ways, some have been mentioned here

GPU and CPU are very susceptible to this. Clock and fan speeds for each can be controlled via software. And malicious driver could cause overheating as well.

There was bug in linux that caused some intel NICs to be bricked, it is the firmware thing mentioned above.
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/08/09/23/133258/opensuse-beta-can-brick-intel-e1000e-network-cards

 

[zOSHelpForums]

Yes.

Just for the easiest example (I can think of) - blowing speakers is an easy one, just do it.

 

[Spungo]

Pretty much anything with moving parts is prone to failure. My Diablo 2 and Neverwinter Nights CDs were scratched in the drive because the copy protection required a CD in the drive at all times, and I would play those games almost every day. I think it was Sony that got in trouble for causing CD drive failures because their copy protection would cause the drive to constantly spin up and spin down. Hard drives seem to die faster if they're constantly doing random read/write, spin up and spin down.

 

[Tweak155]

Anyone recall when Starcraft II was frying video cards because it didn't cap the FPS on the menu screens? That's the first thing that came to mind.

It would overheat and fry video cards quite frequently.

 

[Cogman]

Anyone recall when Starcraft II was frying video cards because it didn't cap the FPS on the menu screens? That's the first thing that came to mind.

It would overheat and fry video cards quite frequently.

That one is more a hardware fault than a software fault. The software wasn't doing anything illegitimately with the hardware, it was just running as fast as possible. The problem is the hardware had a fault in it when it was ran as fast as possible.

 

[alkemyst]

That one is more a hardware fault than a software fault. The software wasn't doing anything illegitimately with the hardware, it was just running as fast as possible. The problem is the hardware had a fault in it when it was ran as fast as possible.

Almost all hardware will fail if the clocks are ran as fast as possible.

 

[tential]

I'd say in general it's not the INTENT of viruses to destroy the hardware.
The virus wants to get your information, or use your PC's resources.
As a result of utilizing your PC's resources it could damage your hardware.

Example: A virus infects your PC, and continuously downloads/uploads files.
That could destroy your Hard Drive eventually by having it consistently run 24/7, especially if it was in a poorly ventilated laptop.

Or a bug can ruin hardware as well. Example of this is there used to be a bug in WMP (May still be there), that would download metadata for WMP. However, it would sometimes freak out, and continually download metadata files for CDs. Left unchecked, it would download MILLIONS of 1 byte files which is not only terrible for your HDD, but when you tried to open the directory to delete the files, it would lock the PC up making it almost impossible to delete the files. Deleting the files took days to finish.

You could have a virus where it's utilizing your PC's CPU to brute force a password. That would keep your CPU running at 100% constantly which shouldn't fry your CPU since your CPU should downclock and has safety measures to save it but in combination with other things (like bad ventilation, or maybe your CPU fan fails after running at 100% speed consistently), it may fail.

It's not something I'd worry about though if I was you....

 

[Cogman]

Almost all hardware will fail if the clocks are ran as fast as possible.

But the software in question wasn't doing anything with the clock speeds. It was simply running very fast code without any rate limiters.

The equivalent is running something like superpi and having the CPU fail. Would you say that super pi damaged the CPU? no, because superpi was only using the CPU as intended.

In the case of starcraft 2, the GPU was being taxed by the starcraft menu system. The fact that GPUs were damaged is the fault of the GPU manufacturers, not blizzard. The GPU manufacturers are the ones that should have downclocked their GPUs when the temps got high or delivered GPUs with fans that could dissipate the heat they were generating in the first place.

 

[Exophase]

Incidentally, what's a line mux setting?

Setting which says which audio source gets directed to which physical speaker or other output.