CVE-2021-42114

Published Nov 16, 2021

Last updated 3 years ago

Overview

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.
Source
vulnerability@ncsc.ch
NVD status
Analyzed

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Primary
Base score
8.3
Impact score
6
Exploitability score
1.6
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Severity
HIGH

CVSS 2.0

Type
Primary
Base score
7.9
Impact score
10
Exploitability score
5.5
Vector string
AV:A/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Weaknesses

nvd@nist.gov
NVD-CWE-Other
vulnerability@ncsc.ch
CWE-20

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations