can this cause a miner to malfunction?

[Biodom]

Not sure if these nasty programs can load anything, but maybe disrupt your connections/mining while trying to connect to the miner that it would perceive as one of your devices:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/

[notlist3d]

Not sure if these nasty programs can load anything, but maybe disrupt your connections/mining while trying to connect to the miner that it would perceive as one of your devices:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/

Miners should be immune to this. All of the ones I have had do not have a Mic.  So that makes it impossible to receive that sound. 

I you used a windows machine to power a miner or a RPI with mic plugged in... maybe they don't release much details so hard to say.  But I doubt they do a miner variant to say switch pools, etc.