RowHammer Attack | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated yet another variation of the Rowhammer attack affecting all  DRAM  (dynamic random-access memory) chips that bypasses currently deployed mitigations, thereby effectively compromising the security of the devices. The new technique — dubbed " Blacksmith " ( CVE-2021-42114 , CVSS score: 9.0) — is designed to trigger bit flips on target refresh rate-enabled DRAM chips with the help of novel "non-uniform and frequency-based" memory access patterns, according to a study jointly published by academics from ETH Zurich, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Qualcomm Technologies. Originally disclosed in 2014,  Rowhammer  refers to a fundamental hardware vulnerability that could be abused to alter or corrupt memory contents by taking advantage of DRAM's tightly-packed, matrix-like memory cell architecture to repeatedly access certain rows (aka "aggressors") that induces an electrical disturbance large enough to cause t...

Remember rowhammer vulnerability? A critical issue affecting modern DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips that could allow attackers to obtain higher kernel privileges on a targeted system by repeatedly accessing memory cells and induce bit flips. To mitigate Rowhammer vulnerability on the latest DDR4 DRAM, many memory chip manufacturers added some defenses under the umbrella term Target Row Refresh (TRR) that refreshes adjacent rows when a victim row is accessed more than a threshold. But it turns out 'Target Row Refresh,' promoted as a silver bullet to mitigate rowhammer attacks, is also insufficient and could let attackers execute new hammering patterns and re-enable the bit-flip attacks on the latest hardware as well. TRRespass: The Rowhammer Fuzzing Tool Tracked as CVE-2020-10255 , the newly reported vulnerability was discovered by researchers at VUSec Lab, who today also released ' TRRespass ,' an open source black box many-sided RowHammer fuzzin...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

A team of cybersecurity researchers demonstrated a novel yet another technique to hijack Intel SGX, a hardware-isolated trusted space on modern Intel CPUs that encrypts extremely sensitive data to shield it from attackers even when a system gets compromised. Dubbed Plundervolt and tracked as CVE-2019-11157, the attack relies on the fact that modern processors allow frequency and voltage to be adjusted when needed, which, according to researchers, can be modified in a controlled way to induce errors in the memory by flipping bits. Bit flip is a phenomenon widely known for the Rowhammer attack wherein attackers hijack vulnerable memory cells by changing their value from 1 to a 0, or vice versa—all by tweaking the electrical charge of neighboring memory cells. However, since the Software Guard Extensions (SGX) enclave memory is encrypted, the Plundervolt attack leverages the same idea of flipping bits by injecting faults in the CPU before they are written to the memory. Plundervo...

A team of cybersecurity researchers yesterday revealed details of a new side-channel attack on dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) that could allow malicious programs installed on a modern system to read sensitive memory data from other processes running on the same hardware. Dubbed RAMBleed and identified as CVE-2019-0174 , the new attack is based on a well-known class of DRAM side channel attack called Rowhammer , various variants [ GLitch , RAMpage , Throwhammer ,  Nethammer , Drammer ] of which have been demonstrated by researchers in recent years. Known since 2012, Rowhammer bug is a hardware reliability issue that was found in the new generation of DRAM chips. It turned out that repeatedly and rapidly accessing (hammering) a row of memory can cause bit flips in adjacent rows, i.e., changing their bit values from 0 to 1 or vice-versa. In the following years, researchers also demonstrated successful exploits to achieve privilege escalation on the vulnerable computers...

A team of security researchers has discovered a new set of techniques that could allow hackers to bypass all kind of present mitigations put in place to prevent DMA-based Rowhammer attacks against Android devices. Dubbed RAMpage , the new technique (CVE-2018-9442) could re-enable an unprivileged Android app running on the victim's device to take advantage from the previously disclosed Drammer attack , a variant of DRAM Rowhammer  hardware vulnerability for Android devices, in an attempt to gain root privileges on the target device. You might have already read a few articles about RAMpage on the Internet or even the research paper, but if you are still unable to understand— what the heck is RAMpage —we have briefed the research in language everyone can understand. Before jumping directly on the details of RAMpage, it is important for you to understand what is RowHammer vulnerability, how it can be exploited using Drammer attack to hack Android devices and what mitigations G...

Last week, we reported about the first network-based remote Rowhammer attack, dubbed Throwhammer , which involves the exploitation a known vulnerability in DRAM through network cards using remote direct memory access (RDMA) channels. However, a separate team of security researchers has now demonstrated a second network-based remote Rowhammer technique that can be used to attack systems using uncached memory or flush instruction while processing the network requests. The research was carried out by researchers who discovered Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities, which is independent of the Amsterdam researchers who presented a series of Rowhammer attacks, including Throwhammer published last week. If you are unaware, Rowhammer is a critical issue with recent generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause "bit flipping" in an adjacent row, allowing attackers to change the contents of the memory. The...

Exploitation of Rowhammer attack just got easier. Dubbed ' Throwhammer ,' the newly discovered technique could allow attackers to launch Rowhammer attack on the targeted systems just by sending specially crafted packets to the vulnerable network cards over the local area network. Known since 2012, Rowhammer is a severe issue with recent generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause "bit flipping" in an adjacent row, allowing anyone to change the contents of computer memory. The issue has since been exploited in a number of ways to achieve remote code execution on the vulnerable computers and servers. Just last week, security researchers detailed a proof-of-concept Rowhammer attack technique, dubbed GLitch , that leverages embedded graphics processing units (GPUs) to carry out Rowhammer attacks against Android devices. However, all previously known Rowhammer attack techniques required privilege escal...

For the very first time, security researchers have discovered an effective way to exploit a four-year-old hacking technique called Rowhammer to hijack an Android phone remotely. Dubbed GLitch , the proof-of-concept technique is a new addition to the Rowhammer attack series which leverages embedded graphics processing units (GPUs) to carry out a Rowhammer attack against Android smartphones. Rowhammer is a problem with recent generation dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in which repeatedly accessing a row of memory can cause "bit flipping" in an adjacent row, allowing anyone to change the value of contents stored in computer memory. Known since at least 2012, the issue was first exploited by Google's Project Zero researchers in early 2015, when they pulled off remote Rowhammer attacks on computers running Windows and Linux. Last year, a team of researchers in the VUSec Lab at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam demonstrated that the Rowhammer technique could ...