
We show in our paper that an attacker, by observing Rowhammer-induced bit flips in her own memory, can deduce the values in nearby DRAM rows. However, RAMBleed can be used for reading other data as well. … The implications of violating arbitrary privilege boundaries are numerous, and vary in severity.Īs an example, in our paper we demonstrate an attack against OpenSSH in which we use RAMBleed to leak a 2048 bit RSA key. describe Reading Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: Due to deficiencies in the memory modules, the RAM bleeds its contents, which we then recover through a side-channel. RAMBleed can bypass ECC protections targeted row refresh isn't an automatic defense against Rowhammer. That generally includes using DDR4 ECC a feature known as targeted row refresh. advises using DRAM that's resistant to Rowhammer attacks. … RAMBleed was able to successfully read bits stored in ECC memory with a 73% accuracy at a rate of 0.64 bit per second. … When corrections occur, they happen in a predictable way that first corrects the error and then passes the corrected value to the software. … RAMBleed and the previous attacks it builds on poses a longer-term threat, especially for users of low-cost commodity hardware. … The attacks work because as capacitors become closer together, they more quickly leak the electrical charges that store the bits.īy combining the memory massaging techniques with new side-channel attack, the researchers … were able to extract an RSA 2048-bit signing key from an OpenSSH server using only user-level permissions. DDR4 supports a defensive technique called Targeted Row Refresh, but its efficacy is uncertain.Īnd Dan Goodin jumps in- RAMBleed side-channel attack works even when DRAM is protected by error-correcting code: The new data-pilfering RAMBleed technique exploits the ever-shrinking dimensions of DRAM chips that store data a computer needs to carry out various tasks. Hardware-based mitigations may help, though one proposed measure, PARA (probabilistic adjacent row activation) has not been widely adopted and only offers a probabilistic (rather than consistent) security guarantee.
2048 HACKED SOFTWARE
express skepticism about existing software mitigations, noting that RAMBleed can bypass software-based integrity checks and memory partitioning schemes.
2048 HACKED CODE
one of the mitigations proposed for Rowhammer – using error-correcting code (ECC) memory as a means of ensuring memory integrity – fails to block RAMBleed. … Rowhammer has been assumed to be relatively benign because there aren't really any security implications to flipping bits within one's own private memory. This is not particularly brilliant for multi-tenant boxes in public clouds. … In a paper released online … with the now obligatory vulnerability illustration and dedicated domain … Andrew Kwong … Daniel Genkin … Daniel Gruss … and Yuval Yarom … describe a way to use the Rowhammer technique as a side channel to read data that should be off limits. What’s the craic? Thomas Claburn explains it smashes DRAM until it leaks apps' crypto-keys, passwords, other secrets: Boffins from Australia, Austria, and the US have expanded upon the Rowhammer memory attack technique to create more dangerous variation.

Not to mention: $999? Sky falling (again) Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.

In this week’s Security Blogwatch, we go live in a yurt. Multi-tenant public cloud is suddenly looking less attractive. You don’t need any runtime privilege. Neither DDR4, ECC, nor TRR can save us. Yes, any memory: It works across processes, containers, and even VMs. RAMBleed is their catchy name for an arsenal of ways to read any physical memory on a machine. Researchers have been experimenting with Rowhammer.
