CVE-2021-42114 Scalable Rowhammering In the Frequency Domain to Bypass TRR Mitigations On Modern DDR4/LPDDR4X Devices
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2021-42114?
CVE-2021-42114 is a critical vulnerability in Micron ddr4_sdram, published on 16 Nov 2021.
Official description
Modern 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.
Weakness: CWE-20
Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-42114?
It affects 6 products.
Products include Micron Ddr4 Sdram Firmware, Micron Lddr4 Firmware, Samsung Ddr4 Sdram Firmware, Samsung Lddr4 Firmware, Skhynix Ddr4 Sdram Firmware, Skhynix Lddr4 Firmware.
How do I fix CVE-2021-42114?
No fix has been published for CVE-2021-42114 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Is CVE-2021-42114 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-42114 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-6wv8-rx52-7p78.