What happens when you try to call the hard drive?

Question

Hard disks

Good evening.
In his book "Just for fun" Linus Torvalds writes: "But in December I mistakenly called the hard drive instead of the modem. Instead of the auto-dial parameter /dev/ttyl (serial interface), I specified /dev/hdal (hard drive). As a result I accidentally messed up some important parts of the section." What generally happens to the hard drive when you try to dial, at the physical level? This is out of pure curiosity. Thanks in advance for your replies.

Answer 1

If you are interested, Mordechai Guri from Israel proposed the DiskFiltration data theft method, in which a computer completely isolated from all networks uses special software to "tap" secret information with disk heads, i.e. acoustically transmits it to a nearby smartphone, which immediately decodes and transmits further. The speed, of course, is hellishly small, but enough to copy the crypto key. It won't work on an SSD.