How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack (2018) | Hacker News Reader

How We Reverse Engineered the Cuban “Sonic Weapon” Attack (2018)

spectrum.ieee.org

68 pointsjeffreyrogers43 comments

I thought it was accepted now that those were cicadas? [1] [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack-cuba...

[2] https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/76hgkmv/havana-synd...

It is. The linked article is from 2018, before it was determined the recordings were of crickets.

But that doesn't explain the now hundreds of similar reports of illness and other side effects, usually reported after hearing the sound.

Mass hysteria combined with nocebo effect? Triggered by an encounter with cicada trapped in a hotel room.

Similar example, the Pokemon Panic of 1997: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Radford#Pok%C3%A9mon_...

A few legit cases of seizure triggered thousands of "false" cases.

These attacks are reported to have long-lasting consequences. That would be (I think?) incompatible with mass hysteria or nocebo effects.

Remarkably, after the recordings that preceded the illnesses were found to be crickets, everyone stopped reporting the cricket noise before the illness. Now, the American diplomats in Vienna report a new noise, a ringing in their ears, which apparently is not recorded.

Now the "cicadas" and neurological damage are occurring near the White House.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/29/us-investigating-peculiar-at...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/29/politics/us-investigating-mys...

I think it's looking more and more like an actual attack.

Or countermeasure going haywire.

Or countermeasure going haywire. At any rate, not cicadas.

Yes, that seems like an obvious dead end, if not decoy.

Or someone just had a bad headache. I don't think it's very likely that there's a secret energy weapon hidden in the bushes near the whitehouse.

From the article:

"While the equipment we used in our Cuban re-creation is relatively bulky, ultrasonic emitters can be quite tiny, no larger than a piece of Rolo candy. Online, we found a manufacturer in Russia that sells a fashionable leather clutch that conceals an ultrasonic emitter, presumably to jam recording devices at cocktail parties. We also found electronics stores that carry high- power ultrasonic jammers that cause microphones to malfunction. One advertised jammer emits 120-dB ultrasonic interference at a distance of 1 meter. That’s like standing next to a chainsaw. If a signal from that caliber jammer were to combine with a second ultrasonic source, audible by-products could result."

Consider an countermeasure ultrasonic emitter intended to jam microphones in proximity to, say, a spy emitter using ultrasonic sound as a carrier wave for a microphone, as described in the article.

Yes, probably caused by those UFOs that everyone keeps talking about.

Much more plausibly, people in the US military and/or secret services are trying to invent trouble in the wake of recent relative peace.

> the wake of recent relative peace.

Huh? January 6th was only ~6 months ago and the fall out from that continues.

Cyberwarfare continues to ramp up.

Yes, still highly consistent, given [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/05/brood-x-cica...

The alleged whitehouse incident was in november. I don't think it was an attack, but it wasn't cicadas.

... or someone is using correlation to make it look like cicadas.

The common denominator here seems to be that it happens in secure US Government buildings. I have to wonder whether it’s related to the security technology itself, like some noise cancellation tech incorporated into the standard SCIF security system interferes badly with the ultrasound sensors of the intruder alarms to create these noise artifacts…

From the article:

> We also found electronics stores that carry high- power ultrasonic jammers that cause microphones to malfunction

and:

  If a signal from that caliber jammer were to combine with a second ultrasonic source, audible by-products could result.

Just curious, why is this comment being heavily downvoted? edit: why was, since it's now back up

> Just curious, why is this comment being heavily downvoted? edit: why was, since it's now back up

Some people weirdly seem to be really, really invested in "Havana syndrome" being psychosomatic/mass hysteria/US footgun/anything besides a deliberate attack.

like hn poster's bizarre and honestly naive infatuation with the concept of covid-19 being escaped from a lab?

quit, it is embarrassing

Interesting. When the cicadas get bad I do have a lot of trouble working for long periods in my outdoor shop. My ears ring and I get headaches.

It does seem likely that the sound being recorded was crickets. However, that doesn't really prove that sound of crickets was the thing causing problems if it's being replicated in washington.

One of the recent developments:

"Havana Syndrome Task Force to Be Led by Veteran of Hunt for Bin Laden

CIA Director Burns turns to undercover agency veteran to track down cause of health incidents suffered by U.S. spies and diplomats"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/havana-syndrome-task-force-to-b... (https://archive.is/HlDZF) (July 21, 2021)

Why does it seen like every article about this “sonic weapon” conflicts with other accounts

I think any article that starts from the premise that it was a sonic weapon is so deep into the land of speculation that I'd be shocked if they didn't contradict each other.

Kinda like asking why every bigfoot sighting is different from others.

Why is it so hard to get accurate information on cutting-edge spycraft and sensitive matters affecting national security?

What's the difference between "reverse engineering" and speculation in this case? It's widely debated whether any device intentionally caused these symptoms. The article doesn't shed any light on this.

To me, this case involves reverse engineering, because they were able to generate a similar time based on carefully deconstructing the recorded sound.

I guess I assumed reverse engineering was understood to mean explaining how a phenomenon actually occurred. They've recreated a similar outcome, but haven't given any evidence that it's related to what happened in Cuba.

If I look at a hole in the wall and recreate it by pounding my fist through the wall to create another hole, did I reverse engineer the first hole? Or did I just reproduce the effect?

2018 and much of the claims in here are now disputed

Still interesting to read how they "reverse engineered" it and came to the wrong/premature conclusions.

Clickbait, TLDR: we really did not figure it out and have little to go on still.

I think this needs a (2018) added to the title.

Anybody know what this might technically refer to specifically?

    He took spectral measurements and noticed that the lightbulb tended to shriek when the air conditioner turned on.

Maybe an app on a phone, specialized equipment?

Real-time analyzer apps, which give the frequency breakdown of ambient noise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_analyzer

Previous thread about the use of these for debugging mystery sounds that not everyone can hear:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14981088

> Maybe an app on a phone

A good microphone circuit, designed for humans, will have a filter to limit its sensitivity to the audible range.

For measurements that include ultrasonic frequencies, specialized equipment is needed, since much higher sample rates are required.

> That is, bad engineering may be a more likely culprit than a sonic weapon.

hanlon's razor!

I thought it was microwave-type weapons that people claimed were being used against them. Now its sound? I'm confused, are these the same events or different?

It's sort of a funny thing where efforts to recreate something that may be completely mythical, actually end up bringing that thing into existence.

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