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We will discuss the RowHammer problem in DRAM, which is a prime (and likely the first) example of how a circuit-level failure mechanism in Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) can cause a practical and widespread system security…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2019-03-28 Onur Mutlu

DRAM scaling has exacerbated the RowHammer vulnerability. To counter this, JEDEC recently introduced Per Row Activation Counting (PRAC) with the Alert Back-Off protocol as an optional DDR5 feature. While promising, PRAC requires per-row…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Jeonghyun Woo , Junsu Kim , Aamer Jaleel , Prashant J. Nair

Rowhammer is a hardware vulnerability in DRAM memory, where repeated access to memory can induce bit flips in neighboring memory locations. Being a hardware vulnerability, rowhammer bypasses all of the system memory protection, allowing…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2020-07-30 Zhi Zhang , Yueqiang Cheng , Dongxi Liu , Surya Nepal , Zhi Wang , Yuval Yarom

DRAM chips are vulnerable to read disturbance phenomena (e.g., RowHammer and RowPress), where repeatedly accessing or keeping open a DRAM row causes bitflips in nearby rows. Attackers leverage RowHammer bitflips in real systems to take over…

This paper focuses on mitigating DRAM Rowhammer attacks. In recent years, solutions like TRR have been deployed in DDR4 DRAM to track aggressor rows and then issue a mitigative action by refreshing neighboring victim rows. Unfortunately,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-04-26 Aamer Jaleel , Stephen W. Keckler , Gururaj Saileshwar

This paper provides the fundamental mechanisms of two types of row activation-induced bit flips and proposes in-DRAM protection techniques. RowBleed occurs when a victim row experiences charge leakage due to transistor's threshold voltage…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Seungki Hong , Dongha Kim , Jaehyung Lee , Reum Oh , Changsik Yoo , Sangjoon Hwang , Jooyoung Lee

RowHammer is a circuit-level DRAM vulnerability, where repeatedly activating and precharging a DRAM row, and thus alternating the voltage of a row's wordline between low and high voltage levels, can cause bit flips in physically nearby…

Since its public introduction in the mid-2010s, the Row Hammer (RH) phenomenon has drawn significant attention from the research community due to its security implications. Although many RH-protection schemes have been proposed by processor…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Michael Jaemin Kim , Jaehyun Park , Yeonhong Park , Wanju Doh , Namhoon Kim , Tae Jun Ham , Jae W. Lee , Jung Ho Ahn

In order to shed more light on how RowHammer affects modern and future devices at the circuit-level, we first present an experimental characterization of RowHammer on 1580 DRAM chips (408x DDR3, 652x DDR4, and 520x LPDDR4) from 300 DRAM…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2020-06-01 Jeremie S. Kim , Minesh Patel , A. Giray Yaglikci , Hasan Hassan , Roknoddin Azizi , Lois Orosa , Onur Mutlu

The Rowhammer vulnerability continues to get worse, with the Rowhammer Threshold (TRH) reducing from 139K activations to 4.8K activations over the last decade. Typical Rowhammer mitigations rely on tracking aggressor rows. The number of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-11-08 Anish Saxena , Moinuddin Qureshi

JEDEC has introduced the Per Row Activation Counting (PRAC) framework for DDR5 and future DRAMs to enable precise counting of DRAM row activations. PRAC enables a holistic mitigation of Rowhammer attacks even at ultra-low Rowhammer…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Jeonghyun Woo , Chris S. Lin , Prashant J. Nair , Aamer Jaleel , Gururaj Saileshwar

The demand for accurate information about the internal structure and characteristics of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) has been on the rise. Recent studies have explored the structure and characteristics of DRAM to improve processing…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-08-15 Hwayong Nam , Seungmin Baek , Minbok Wi , Michael Jaemin Kim , Jaehyun Park , Chihun Song , Nam Sung Kim , Jung Ho Ahn

DRAM is the building block of modern main memory systems. DRAM cells must be periodically refreshed to prevent data loss. Refresh operations degrade system performance by interfering with memory accesses. As DRAM chip density increases with…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2022-09-22 Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı , Ataberk Olgun , Minesh Patel , Haocong Luo , Hasan Hassan , Lois Orosa , Oğuz Ergin , Onur Mutlu

The Rowhammer bug allows unauthorized modification of bits in DRAM cells from unprivileged software, enabling powerful privilege-escalation attacks. Sophisticated Rowhammer countermeasures have been presented, aiming at mitigating the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2018-02-01 Daniel Gruss , Moritz Lipp , Michael Schwarz , Daniel Genkin , Jonas Juffinger , Sioli O'Connell , Wolfgang Schoechl , Yuval Yarom

RowHammer is a circuit-level DRAM vulnerability where repeatedly accessing (i.e., hammering) a DRAM row can cause bit flips in physically nearby rows. The RowHammer vulnerability worsens as DRAM cell size and cell-to-cell spacing shrink.…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-10-22 Lois Orosa , Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı , Haocong Luo , Ataberk Olgun , Jisung Park , Hasan Hassan , Minesh Patel , Jeremie S. Kim , Onur Mutlu

RowHammer vulnerabilities pose a significant threat to modern DRAM-based systems, where rapid activation of DRAM rows can induce bit-flips in neighboring rows. To mitigate this, state-of-the-art host-side RowHammer mitigations typically…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Jeonghyun Woo , Prashant J. Nair

This paper challenges the existing victim-focused counter-based RowHammer detection mechanisms by experimentally demonstrating a novel multi-sided fault injection attack technique called Threshold Breaker. This mechanism can effectively…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2023-11-29 Ranyang Zhou , Jacqueline Liu , Sabbir Ahmed , Nakul Kochar , Adnan Siraj Rakin , Shaahin Angizi

Rowhammer is a serious security problem of contemporary dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) where reads or writes of bits can flip other bits. DRAM manufacturers add mitigations, but don't disclose details, making it difficult for customers…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-12-01 Amir Naseredini , Martin Berger , Matteo Sammartino , Shale Xiong

Rowhammer attacks that corrupt level-1 page tables to gain kernel privilege are the most detrimental to system security and hard to mitigate. However, recently proposed software-only mitigations are not effective against such kernel…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-12-14 Zhi Zhang , Yueqiang Cheng , Minghua Wang , Wei He , Wenhao Wang , Nepal Surya , Yansong Gao , Kang Li , Zhe Wang , Chenggang Wu

Rowhammer is a security vulnerability that allows unauthorized attackers to induce errors within DRAM cells. To prevent fault injections from escalating to successful attacks, a widely accepted mitigation is implementing fault checks on…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-06-12 Kemal Derya , M. Caner Tol , Berk Sunar