Row hammer
Computer security exploit / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Row hammer (also written as rowhammer) is a computer security exploit that takes advantage of an unintended and undesirable side effect in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in which memory cells interact electrically between themselves by leaking their charges, possibly changing the contents of nearby memory rows that were not addressed in the original memory access. This circumvention of the isolation between DRAM memory cells results from the high cell density in modern DRAM, and can be triggered by specially crafted memory access patterns that rapidly activate the same memory rows numerous times.[1][2][3]
The row hammer effect has been used in some privilege escalation computer security exploits,[2][4][5][6] and network-based attacks are also theoretically possible.[7][8]
Different hardware-based techniques exist to prevent the row hammer effect from occurring, including required support in some processors and types of DRAM memory modules.[9][10]