Google Says Rowhammer Attacks Are Gaining Range as RAM is Getting Smaller

A team of Google security researchers said they discovered a new way to perform Rowhammer attacks against computer memory (RAM) cards that broaden the attack's initial impact. From a report: First detailed in 2014, Rowhammer was a ground-breaking attack that exploited the design of modern RAM cards, where memory cells are stored in grid-like arrangements. The basic principle behind Rowhammer was that a malicious app could perform rapid read/write operations on a row of memory cells. As the cells would shift their values from 0 to 1 and vice versa in a very small time window, this would generate small electromagnetic fields inside the row of "hammered" memory cells. The result of these fields were errors in nearby memory rows that sometimes flipped bits and altered adjacent data. [...] In a research paper published this week, a team of five Google security researchers took Rowhammer attacks to a new level. In a new attack variation named Half-Double, researchers said they managed to carry out a Rowhammer attack that caused bit flips at a distance of two rows from the aoehammereda row instead of just one.

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