New Rowhammer Attack Bypass Previously Proposed Countermeasures

[Solarquest]

Security researchers have come up with a variation of the Rowhammer attack that bypasses all previously proposed countermeasures.

The term Rowhammer is used to describe a security exploit that takes advantage of the fact that hardware vendors, in the chase for bigger memories and smaller-sized components, are cramming too many memory cells together on the same boards.

Researchers discovered that an attacker could bombard RAM memory cell rows with constant read-write operations causing the memory cells to change their electrical charge, which inherently modifies the stored data bits from 1 to 0 and vice-versa, altering the information stored in a computer's memory.

Attackers can use this attack to deliver malicious code that alters normal OS behavior to escalate the attacker's privileges, root devices, or cause denial-of-service states to crucial services, such as security software.

Rowhammer attacks can cause a lot of damage
Details about Rowhammer attack came to light in 2014, and newer research on the topic has been published on a steadily basis ever since. Researchers discovered that:
⊷ Rowhammer attacks work against DDR3and DDR4 memory cards
⊷ they can use carry out Rowhammer attacks via mundane JavaScript and not necessarily via specialized malware
⊷ they could take over Windows machines by attacking Edge with a Rowhammer attack
⊷ they could use Rowhammer to take over Linux-based virtual machines installed in cloud hosting providers
⊷ they could use a Rowhammer attack to root Android devices
.....

 

[tonibalas]

This is very serious.
This thing can do a lot of damage.
I read the whole article and even with HMPA installed it had me thinking if i am well protected.
Even SSD's are in trouble.
I would like to see a test if HMPA and other security software can stop it.

 

[509322]

I read the whole article and even with HMPA installed it had me thinking if i am well protected.

Ask one of the Loman brothers. HMP.A does not protect against side-channel attacks themselves. It possibly can thwart an attack prior to the side-channel attack itself - dependent upon how the initial attack proceeds. So, like always, there are protection "ifs".

Side-channel protection solutions need to come from Intel, AMD and other hardware device OEMs - and not by installing a security soft. Research it.

It is just a proof-of-concept attack by researchers. At this point it is nothing to fret over - not one bit.