Stop! Hammer time

Abstract

Rowhammer attacks exploit electromagnetic interference among nearby DRAM cells to flip bits, corrupting data and altering system behavior. Unfortunately, DRAM vendors have opted for a blackbox approach to preventing these bit flips, exposing little information about in-DRAM mitigations. Despite vendor claims that their mitigations prevent Rowhammer, recent work bypasses these defenses to corrupt data. Further work shows that the Rowhammer problem is actually worsening in emerging DRAM and posits that system-level support is needed to produce adaptable and scalable defenses.

Topics & Concepts