DRAM-Profiler: An Experimental DRAM RowHammer Vulnerability Profiling Mechanism

TL;DR

This paper introduces DRAM-Profiler, a low-overhead technique for profiling DRAM RowHammer vulnerabilities, revealing significant variability across commercial DDR4 chips and aiding mitigation strategies.

Contribution

It presents a novel profiling method using test vectors to categorize memory cells by security levels, enabling dynamic vulnerability assessment and mitigation.

Findings

Significant variability in RowHammer vulnerability across different DDR4 chips.

The profiling technique effectively categorizes memory cells by security risk.

Assessment of 128 commercial DDR4 modules demonstrates diverse attack susceptibilities.

Abstract

RowHammer stands out as a prominent example, potentially the pioneering one, showcasing how a failure mechanism at the circuit level can give rise to a significant and pervasive security vulnerability within systems. Prior research has approached RowHammer attacks within a static threat model framework. Nonetheless, it warrants consideration within a more nuanced and dynamic model. This paper presents a low-overhead DRAM RowHammer vulnerability profiling technique termed DRAM-Profiler, which utilizes innovative test vectors for categorizing memory cells into distinct security levels. The proposed test vectors intentionally weaken the spatial correlation between the aggressors and victim rows before an attack for evaluation, thus aiding designers in mitigating RowHammer vulnerabilities in the mapping phase. While there has been no previous research showcasing the impact of such profiling to our knowledge, our study methodically assesses 128 commercial DDR4 DRAM products. The results uncover the significant variability among chips from different manufacturers in the type and quantity of RowHammer attacks that can be exploited by adversaries.