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Academics from Vrije University in Amsterdam and ETH Zurich have published a new research paper describing yet another variation of the Rowhammer attack. Dubbed  SMASH  (Synchronized MAny-Sided Hammering), the technique can be used to successfully trigger the attack from JavaScript on modern DDR4 RAM cards, notwithstanding extensive mitigations that have been put in place by manufacturers over the last seven years. "Despite their in-DRAM Target Row Refresh (TRR) mitigations, some of the most recent DDR4 modules are still vulnerable to many-sided Rowhammer bit flips," the researchers said.  "SMASH exploits high-level knowledge of cache replacement policies to generate optimal access patterns for eviction-based many-sided Rowhammer. To bypass the in-DRAM TRR mitigations, SMASH carefully schedules cache hits and misses to successfully trigger synchronized many-sided Rowhammer bit flips." By synchronizing memory requests with DRAM refresh commands, the researchers...

A team of academics from ETH Zürich and Google has discovered a new variant of a RowHammer attack targeting Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5) memory chips from South Korean semiconductor vendor SK Hynix. The RowHammer attack variant, codenamed Phoenix ( CVE-2025-6202 , CVSS score: 7.1), is capable of bypassing sophisticated protection mechanisms put in place to resist the attack. "We have proven that reliably triggering RowHammer bit flips on DDR5 devices from SK Hynix is possible on a larger scale," the Computer Security Group (COMSEC) at ETH Zürich said. "We also proved that on-die ECC does not stop RowHammer, and RowHammer end-to-end attacks are still possible with DDR5." RowHammer refers to a hardware vulnerability where repeated access of a row of memory in a DRAM chip can trigger bit flips in adjacent rows, resulting in data corruption. This can be subsequently weaponized by bad actors to gain unauthorized access to data, escalate privileges, or even cause a...

Cybersecurity researchers from ETH Zurich have developed a new variant of the RowHammer DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) attack that, for the first time, successfully works against AMD Zen 2 and Zen 3 systems despite mitigations such as Target Row Refresh (TRR). "This result proves that AMD systems are equally vulnerable to Rowhammer as Intel systems, which greatly increases the attack surface, considering today's AMD market share of around 36% on x86 desktop CPUs," the researchers  said . The technique has been codenamed  ZenHammer , which can also trigger RowHammer bit flips on DDR5 devices for the first time. RowHammer , first publicly disclosed in 2014, is a  well-known attack  that exploits DRAM's memory cell architecture to alter data by repeatedly accessing a specific row (aka hammering) to cause the electrical charge of a cell to leak to adjacent cells. This can induce random bit flips in neighboring memory rows (from 0 to 1, or vice versa), which can...

Car makers don't trust blueprints. They smash prototypes into walls. Again and again. In controlled conditions. Because design specs don't prove survival. Crash tests do. They separate theory from reality. Cybersecurity is no different. Dashboards overflow with "critical" exposure alerts. Compliance reports tick every box.  But none of that proves what matters most to a CISO: The ransomware crew targeting your sector can't move laterally once inside. That a newly published exploit of a CVE won't bypass your defenses tomorrow morning. That sensitive data can't be siphoned through a stealthy exfiltration channel, exposing the business to fines, lawsuits, and reputational damage. That's why Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) matters.  BAS is the crash test for your security stack. It safely simulates real adversarial behaviors to prove which attacks your defenses can stop, and which would break through. It exposes those gaps before attackers exploit them or regulators d...

Attackers are increasingly turning to session hijacking to get around widespread MFA adoption. The data supports this , as: 147,000 token replay attacks were detected by Microsoft in 2023, a 111% increase year-over-year (Microsoft).  Attacks on session cookies now happen in the same order of magnitude as password-based attacks (Google). But session hijacking isn't a new technique – so what's changed? Session hijacking has a new look When we think of the classic example of session hijacking, we think of old-school Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks that involved snooping on unsecured local network traffic to capture credentials or, more commonly, financial details like credit card data. Or, by conducting client-side attacks compromising a webpage, running malicious JavaScript and using cross-site scripting (XSS) to steal the victim's session ID.  Session hijacking looks quite different these days. No longer network-based, modern session hijacking is an identity-based att...

A team of security researchers from Google has demonstrated yet another variant of the Rowhammer vulnerability that targets increasingly smaller DRAM chips to bypass all current mitigations, making it a persistent threat to chip security. Dubbed "Half-Double," the new hammering technique hinges on the weak coupling between two memory rows that are not immediately adjacent to each other but one row removed in an attempt to tamper with data stored in memory and attack a system . "Unlike  TRRespass , which exploits the blind spots of manufacturer-dependent defenses, Half-Double is an intrinsic property of the underlying silicon substrate," the researchers  noted . "This is likely an indication that the electrical coupling responsible for Rowhammer is a property of distance, effectively becoming stronger and longer-ranged as cell geometries shrink down. Distances greater than two are conceivable." Rowhammer attacks are similar to  speculative execution  ...

You can tell the story of the current state of stolen credential-based attacks in three numbers: Stolen credentials were the #1 attacker action in 2023/24, and the breach vector for 80% of web app attacks . (Source: Verizon). Cybersecurity budgets grew again in 2024, with organizations now spending almost $1,100 per user (Source: Forrester).  Stolen credentials on criminal forums cost as little as $10 (Source: Verizon). Something doesn't add up. So, what's going on? In this article, we'll cover: What's contributing to the huge rise in account compromises linked to stolen creds and why existing approaches aren't working.  The world of murky intelligence on stolen credentials, and how to cut through the noise to find the true positives. Recommendations for security teams to stop attackers from using stolen creds to achieve account takeover. Stolen credential-based attacks are on the rise There's clear evidence that identity attacks are now the #1 cyber threat f...

Imagine a sophisticated cyberattack cripples your organization's most critical productivity and collaboration tool — the platform you rely on for daily operations. In the blink of an eye, hackers encrypt your emails, files, and crucial business data stored in Microsoft 365, holding it hostage using ransomware. Productivity grinds to a halt and your IT team races to assess the damage as the clock ticks down on a ransom demand that threatens to destroy your data forever. How did this happen, and more importantly, how can you prevent it from happening? Microsoft 365 (M365) is the lifeblood of countless organizations worldwide, offering a seamless, cloud-based platform for communication, collaboration and data management. Over 400 million users rely on Microsoft 365 for everything from document creation and management to video conferencing 1 . While M365 has empowered businesses to undergo digital transformation and remain competitive with its support for distributed, hybrid and remote w...

The Problem The "2024 Attack Intelligence Report" from the staff at Rapid7 [1] is a well-researched, well-written report that is worthy of careful study. Some key takeaways are:  53% of the over 30 new vulnerabilities that were widely exploited in 2023 and at the start of 2024 were zero-days . More mass compromise events arose from zero-day vulnerabilities than from n-day vulnerabilities. Nearly a quarter of widespread attacks were zero-day attacks where a single adversary compromised dozens to hundreds of organizations simultaneously. Attackers are moving from initial access to exploitation in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. So the conventional patch and put strategy is as effective as a firetruck showing up after a building has burned to the ground! Of course, patch and put could prevent future attacks, but taking into account that patch development takes from days to weeks [2] and that the average time to apply critical patches is 16 days [3], devices are vu...

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...