CVE-2021-42114

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Summary

CVECVE-2021-42114
StatePUBLIC
Assigner[email protected]
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2021-11-16 12:15:00 UTC
Updated2021-11-29 18:45:00 UTC
DescriptionModern 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.

Risk And Classification

Problem Types: NVD-CWE-Other

NVD Known Affected Configurations (CPE 2.3)

TypeVendorProductVersionUpdateEditionLanguage
Hardware Micron Ddr4 Sdram - All All All
Operating System Micron Ddr4 Sdram Firmware - All All All
Hardware Micron Lddr4 - All All All
Operating System Micron Lddr4 Firmware - All All All
Hardware Samsung Ddr4 Sdram - All All All
Operating System Samsung Ddr4 Sdram Firmware - All All All
Hardware Samsung Lddr4 - All All All
Operating System Samsung Lddr4 Firmware - All All All
Hardware Skhynix Ddr4 Sdram - All All All
Operating System Skhynix Ddr4 Sdram Firmware - All All All
Hardware Skhynix Lddr4 - All All All
Operating System Skhynix Lddr4 Firmware - All All All

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
GitHub - comsec-group/blacksmith: Next-gen Rowhammer fuzzer that uses non-uniform, frequency-based patterns. MISC github.com
Blacksmith – Computer Security Group MISC comsec.ethz.ch
comsec.ethz.ch/wp-content/files/blacksmith_sp22.pdf CONFIRM comsec.ethz.ch
Page not found – Computer Security Group MITRE comsec.ethz.ch
CVE Program record CVE.ORG www.cve.org canonical
NVD vulnerability detail NVD nvd.nist.gov canonical, analysis

Vendor Comments And Credit

Discovery Credit

LEGACY: Kaveh Razavi, Patrick Jattke, Stijn Gunter; Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich

LEGACY: Victor van der Veen; Qualcomm Technologies Inc.

LEGACY: Pietro Frigo; VU Amsterdam

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