“RAMBleed Reading Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them.”
A team of security researchers has published a report on a relatively advanced and previously undetected variant of the Rowhammer attack called RAMBleed. Researchers claim that the new variant can be used for reading the contents of the physical memory instead of merely modifying it as it happens in every other attack.
Rawhammer is a cause of concern for security fraternity since it is an exploitable issue present in computer chips. Using this attack, hackers can easily and repeatedly access dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) rows or hammer.
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This helps the attacker in inducing bit flips in other rows to enable them to perform miscellaneous functions such as obtaining root privileges, compromising Linux virtual machines on cloud servers, evading sandboxes, and remotely attacking Android devices to name a few.
RAMBleed uses Rowhammer attack to steal confidential data stored in the memory of a computer. Researchers successfully used the new Rowhammer variant for obtaining a signing key from an OpenSSH server. They didn’t use elevated user privileges to fulfill this task and in the end, they managed to read data that is stored in the physical memory of the computer. Previously, to carry out Rowhammer attack and make changes to the data, elevated privileges were necessary.
Researchers explained on the website rambleed attack steals sensitive computer memory
