Rowhammer.js: A Remote Software-Induced Fault Attack in JavaScript

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel remote Rowhammer attack using JavaScript, bypassing previous limitations and enabling privilege escalation on off-the-shelf systems without requiring special instructions.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to trigger Rowhammer via cache eviction in JavaScript, enabling remote, browser-based privilege escalation attacks.

Findings

Attack works on standard off-the-shelf systems.

Countermeasures are ineffective against this attack.

Attack can be fully automated using a website.

Abstract

A fundamental assumption in software security is that a memory location can only be modified by processes that may write to this memory location. However, a recent study has shown that parasitic effects in DRAM can change the content of a memory cell without accessing it, but by accessing other memory locations in a high frequency. This so-called Rowhammer bug occurs in most of today's memory modules and has fatal consequences for the security of all affected systems, e.g., privilege escalation attacks. All studies and attacks related to Rowhammer so far rely on the availability of a cache flush instruction in order to cause accesses to DRAM modules at a sufficiently high frequency. We overcome this limitation by defeating complex cache replacement policies. We show that caches can be forced into fast cache eviction to trigger the Rowhammer bug with only regular memory accesses. This allows to trigger the Rowhammer bug in highly restricted and even scripting environments. We demonstrate a fully automated attack that requires nothing but a website with JavaScript to trigger faults on remote hardware. Thereby we can gain unrestricted access to systems of website visitors. We show that the attack works on off-the-shelf systems. Existing countermeasures fail to protect against this new Rowhammer attack.