New Rowhammer attack can grant kernel-level control on Nvidia workstation GPUs

The takeaway: Researchers have spent over a decade studying Rowhammer attacks, in which hackers corrupt memory by repeatedly accessing cells to flip bits through power leakage. A new study suggests the risk is broader than previously thought, and that the widely recommended ECC mitigation is not foolproof.

A study from researchers at UNC Chapel Hill and Georgia Tech shows that GDDR6-based Rowhammer attacks can grant kernel-level access to Linux systems equipped with GPUs based on Nvidia's Ampere and Ada Lovelace architectures. The vulnerability appears significantly more severe than what was outlined in a paper last year.

Rowhammer attacks work by repeatedly accessing a graphics card's memory cells to induce power leakage, flipping bits in adjacent cells. Researchers previously showed that this method can degrade AI model accuracy in Linux workstations using GPUs with GDDR6 memory, such as the Nvidia RTX A6000. Nvidia advised users to enable system-level error-correcting ...