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Comment by Chardok | Hacker News Reader

"US investigators have concluded that the country's diplomats were being hit with an advanced device that can send out sound that is inaudible but can cause huge damage to the ears of a person around them, which appears to have been left either inside or near the diplomats' houses"

So is this an actual device they found or is it something they theorized existed? Does this technology exist now? If so, that is unsettling!

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"Does this technology exist now?"

Oh, yeah, easily. You could quite easily put together such a device yourself. Just put out a 130dB noise for someone in a frequency they can't hear. You can still damage their hearing.

You can play the same game really easily with eyes, too. Put out a very, very bright light in some parts of the UV spectrum and the eye completely can't detect it, won't even close the pupil, but it'll still be damaged/destroyed. You may recognize this as "the reason why the tell you to be very careful during eclipses".

I can't guarantee someone hasn't found some new "advanced" spin on this, so maybe it is an "advanced" device, but the simple case is trivial.

If you break into someone's home with the intention of causing irreparable damage, why not just poison them? What's the point of using a fancy high tech device?

Anyhow, it sounds like a device you can't hear can damage your hearing. It also looks like a device you can't see may damage your vision.

(Edit: Got downvoted, oh come-on, you guys can't take a dad-joke)

A $10 PCB is so much simpler than poison. Easier to acquire, safer (for the attacker) to store and deliver, harder to recognize as a weapon (think wifi router case). And perhaps most importantly, you can include a remote kill switch in case you need to abort the op or temporarily evade an inspection.

Wow, this actually is quite horrifying. Makes me want to go full cyborg.

> "you can include a remote kill switch"

Just don't label it "kill switch" or people will get very confused.

Many years of cartoon villains has taught me that including self-destruct buttons on any of your devices will typically cause them to be used prematurely.

And not one of those villains ever thought to trap the button. Pull to disarm, push to receive flashbang.

Hearing is different in that mechanical transduction pathway and even low frequency cilia can be damaged by air pressure that is not detected as sound. However, the damage itself would be painful and even high frequency pressure of this kind could be felt as weird sensation on skin.

Sure, it wouldn't make sense that this would be intentional - it's more likely that the ultrasound (if it's the cause) would be used for something else, e.g. exfiltrating information out of a secure room or as part of some kind of eavesdropping system.

Also people should be careful using UV EPROM erasers

Sounds that you can't hear can hurt your ears. There is nothing new there and creating such a device would be pretty easy.

I did not know that! It looks like anything greater than 120dB could be entirely inaudible and can lead to hearing loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound#Safety

You are misquoting the article linked, greater than 120db is definitely audible depending on the frequency and the listener. Even at the frequencies they mention (25k being the highest), those are still audible to many humans (myself included).

Even when not audible this high air pressure would be painful.

I wouldn't be 100% certain but yes, it seems unlikely that sound could damage the part of the ear that is stimulated by the given frequency without you hearing it.

It's kind of a weird story. A bunch of people lose their hearing and the first and only thought is mystery weapon? There are a lot of things, including many common medications and infections that can cause hearing loss.

I wonder if they know more or less than reported

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