Security News > 2022 > August > Janet Jackson's music video is now a vulnerability for crashing hard disks
Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation music video of 1989 has officially been declared a security vulnerability as it freezes some models of hard drives on older computers.
A broken record, and "Tape stop" are all too familiar terms for DJs and music enthusiasts, but a song crashing hard disks you say? Now that would make anyone glare.
"A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' would crash certain models of laptops," describes Chen.
Not just that, playing the music video was, according to Chen, even crashing laptops made by competitors.
"Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn't playing the video!".
Rhythm Nation has been deemed a security vulnerability and assigned identifier, CVE-2022-38392 by MITRE. Although realistically speaking, the security risk from playing the music video in this day on modern equipment would be virtually non-existent.
News URL
Related Vulnerability
| DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-08-17 | CVE-2022-38392 | Unspecified vulnerability in * 5400Rmp OEM Harddrive Certain 5400 RPM hard drives, for laptops and other PCs in approximately 2005 and later, allow physically proximate attackers to cause a denial of service (device malfunction and system crash) via a resonant-frequency attack with the audio signal from the Rhythm Nation music video. | 5.3 |