GPUThor: Amplifying Rowhammer Attacks via Non-Uniform Patterns to Exploit ECC-Protected GPUs
GPUThor uses non-uniform hammering to amplify Rowhammer on NVIDIA GPUs, achieving 500X-23,500X more bit flips and first exploits of ECC-protected GPUs.
GPUThor is a Rowhammer attack on NVIDIA GPUs that reverse-engineers memory-access coalescing behavior to enable non-uniform hammering patterns activating aggressor rows more intensely than decoy rows. By identifying refresh instances where in-DRAM mitigations apply, it constructs longer patterns that escape mitigation across refresh intervals. It yields 500X to 23,500X more bit flips than prior GPU Rowhammer attacks across NVIDIA A4000, A4500, A5000, and A6000 GPUs, and enables the first Rowhammer exploits on ECC-protected GPUs via uncorrectable double and triple bit flips, making denial-of-service and privilege-escalation attacks practical.
- Non-uniform hammering yields 500X-23,500X more bit flips than prior GPU Rowhammer
- First Rowhammer exploits on ECC-protected GPUs via uncorrectable multi-bit flips
- Reverse-engineers GPU memory coalescing to boost aggressor row hammering intensity
- Demonstrated on NVIDIA A4000, A4500, A5000, and A6000 GPUs
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgGDDR memory in GPUs is vulnerable to Rowhammer attacks, where rapid memory accesses induce bit flips in adjacent cells, enabling data tampering and privilege escalation. However, prior GPU Rowhammer attacks trigger only tens to hundreds of bit flips, orders of magnitude fewer than CPU attacks, severely limiting their practical impact.
By Chris S. Lin · arxiv.org
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