New Phoenix attack bypasses Rowhammer defenses in DDR5 memory
Scholars have created a new type of Rowhammer attack that gets beyond the most recent security features on SK Hynix DDR5 memory chips.
By repeatedly accessing particular rows of memory cells at high-speed read/write operations, a rowhammer attack can generate enough electrical interference to change the value of the neighboring bits from one to zero and vice versa (a technique known as bit flipping).
An attacker may be able to run malicious code, acquire sensitive data, elevate their privileges on the system, or corrupt data.
When it detects frequent accesses to a certain row, Target Row Refresh (TRR), a protection mechanism against Rowhammer attacks, issues an additional refresh command to stop bit flips.
Phoenix is a novel DDR5 Rowhammer attack developed by a group of resear...