Risky Bulletin Newsletter
March 12, 2025
Risky Bulletin: Large-scale study aims to assess Rowhammer's real world impact
Presented by
News Editor
A team of academics is conducting a large-scale public study to assess the real-world impact of the Rowhammer vulnerability.
First described in a 2014 research paper, Rowhammer is an attack that revolves around the concept of "hammering" a row of RAM memory cells with constant read or write operations. The constant process of turning memory cells on and off causes electrical interference on nearby memory cells, which academics say can be exploited to alter or leak memory data.
For the past decade, multiple teams of academics from all over the world have expanded the original attack to cover multiple technology platforms and optimize and speed up attacks, even showing theoretical web-based exploitation via JavaScript code and raw network packets. Researchers even bypassed some of the tech industry's Rowhammer protections.