Nytro Posted March 18, 2016 Report Posted March 18, 2016 How Rowhammer Could Be Used to Exploit Weaknesses in Computer Hardware March 2016 Mark Lanteigne, CTO and Founder, Third I/O Inc. FOREWORD Gordon Moore, the father of Moore’s Law, predicted that capacitor density in silicon would reach saturation within the next decade. One could argue that his prediction, based on current technologies, is optimistic. The miniaturization or “die shrink” of modern silicon has been slowing for the last several years. And one of the primary reasons for this slowdown is the simple fact that high density capacitor counts in silicon are more susceptible to crosstalk and transistor leakage. These are the types of problems that lead to the highest severity of computer failures, such as locked up or rebooting systems and lost or corrupted data. As silicon capacitor density increases, there is a strong argument for more rigorous testing and validation of new technologies, but unfortunately computer and memory manufacturers seem headed in the opposite direction. One of the best examples of substandard testing, validation, or screening is a widespread computer memory (DRAM) problem that is commonly referred to as Rowhammer. Rowhammer has been present on DDR3 silicon since 2010. The computer industry has been extremely tight lipped on this problem, but many have inferred or directly stated that the problem has been fixed or mitigated in DDR3. And furthermore that is has been fully resolved in DDR4. Based on the analysis by Third I/O, we believe that this problem is significantly worse than what is being reported. And it is still visible on some DDR4 memory modules. Download: http://www.thirdio.com/rowhammer.pdf 1 Quote
