Title:

Thor's Hammer - Rowhammer Attack

This project represents the proof of concept of reliably executing a rowhammer attack. A rowhammer attack takes advantage of a vulnerability that is present in Double Data Rate (DDR) chips. By rapidly activating a physical memory row it is possible to cause data corruption. We setup a Zybo Z7 field programmable gate array to provide a platform to allow our exploit codebase to directly interact with the dynamic random access memory (DRAM). We then studied the specific DRAM chip that existed on the Zybo, and retrieved the DRAM address mapping data that is necessary for the code to accurately iterate over the memory space. The first experiment that we created tested a small subset of the memory space, with the exact same test being repeated while the DRAM was heated. The other experiment that we created tested how the DRAM reacted to various amounts of activity, meaning we changed how many times the DRAM was accessed. These experiments demonstrate some of the conditions that makes DRAM most vulnerable. Due to this exploit being reliant on the physical components rather than any software vulnerability, we postulate that the rowhamer exploit is still a relevant security threat.

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