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Modern DRAM devices (PC-DDR4, LPDDR4X) are affected by a...

Critical severity Unreviewed Published Nov 17, 2021 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Feb 1, 2023

Package

No package listedSuggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

Modern DRAM devices (PC-DDR4, LPDDR4X) are affected by a vulnerability in their internal Target Row Refresh (TRR) mitigation against Rowhammer attacks. Novel non-uniform Rowhammer access patterns, consisting of aggressors with different frequencies, phases, and amplitudes allow triggering bit flips on affected memory modules using our Blacksmith fuzzer. The patterns generated by Blacksmith were able to trigger bitflips on all 40 PC-DDR4 DRAM devices in our test pool, which cover the three major DRAM manufacturers: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. This means that, even when chips advertised as Rowhammer-free are used, attackers may still be able to exploit Rowhammer. For example, this enables privilege-escalation attacks against the kernel or binaries such as the sudo binary, and also triggering bit flips in RSA-2048 keys (e.g., SSH keys) to gain cross-tenant virtual-machine access. We can confirm that DRAM devices acquired in July 2020 with DRAM chips from all three major DRAM vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) are affected by this vulnerability. For more details, please refer to our publication.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Nov 16, 2021
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Nov 17, 2021
Last updated Feb 1, 2023

Severity

Critical

EPSS score

0.154%
(52nd percentile)

Weaknesses

No CWEs

CVE ID

CVE-2021-42114

GHSA ID

GHSA-6wv8-rx52-7p78

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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