INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Enlarge / Researchers used a network card like this one in a Rowhammer attack that needed only packets sent over a LAN to work
(credit: Mellanox)
For the first time, researchers have exploited the Rowhammer memory-chip weakness using nothing more than network
packets sent over a local area network
The advance is likely to further lower the bar for triggering bit flips that change critical pieces of data stored on vulnerable computers
and servers.
Until now, Rowhammer exploits had to execute code on targeted machines
That hurdle required attackers to either sneak the unprivileged code onto the machines or lure end users to a website that hosted malicious
In a paper published Thursday, researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Cyprus showed that standard packets
sent over networks used by many cloud services, universities, and others were sufficient
The secret to the new technique: increasingly fast network speeds that allow hackers to send specially designed packets in rapid
succession.
"Thus far, Rowhammer has been commonly perceived as a dangerous hardware bug that allows attackers capable of executing code on
a machine to escalate their privileges," the researchers wrote
"In this paper, we have shown that Rowhammer is much more dangerous and also allows for remote attacks in practical settings
We show that even at relatively modest network speeds of 10Gbps, it is possible to flip bits in a victim machine from across the
network."
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