Supporting Rowhammer research to protect the DRAM ecosystem
Posted by Daniel Moghimi Rowhammer is a complex class of vulnerabilities across the industry.
Posted by Daniel Moghimi Rowhammer is a complex class of vulnerabilities across the industry. It is a hardware vulnerability in DRAM where repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause bit flips in adjacent rows, leading to data corruption. Hardware vendors have deployed various mitigations, such as ECC and Target Row Refresh (TRR) for DDR5 memory, to mitigate Rowhammer and enhance DRAM reliability. To address this gap and help the ecosystem with deploying robust defenses, Google has supported academic research and developed test platforms to analyze DDR5 memory.
Initially considered a reliability issue, it has been leveraged by security researchers to demonstrate privilege escalation attacks. An adversary can exploit Rowhammer via: Reliably cause bit flips by repeatedly accessing adjacent DRAM rows.
DRAM cells store data as electrical charges, but these electric charges leak over time, causing data corruption.
Why this matters
Initially considered a reliability issue, it has been leveraged by security researchers to demonstrate privilege escalation attacks.
An adversary can exploit Rowhammer via: Reliably cause bit flips by repeatedly accessing adjacent DRAM rows.
How organizations are responding
DRAM cells store data as electrical charges, but these electric charges leak over time, causing data corruption.
What remains unknown
The available reporting does not establish whether the issue is being actively exploited in the wild.
The available reporting does not establish who is behind the activity, if an attacker is involved.