Abstract: A decade later, we are still struggling with software-triggered bit flips in DRAM, famously known as Rowhammer. Modern DRAM devices deploy internal mitigations, but as we will show, they are all unfortunately vulnerable to certain access patterns that effectively bypass these mitigations. Since we cannot patch DRAM, these bit flips are going to stay with us for many years to come, so it's important to ensure that the next generation of mitigations provide principled security guarantees. We will discuss our recent efforts in the construction of such mitigations inside DRAM.
Bio: Kaveh Razavi is an assistant professor at ETH Zurich where he leads the Computer Security Group. His research interests are in the area of systems and security. More recently, he has been involved in the discovery and exploitation of many high-profile hardware vulnerabilities in commodity hardware components such as DRAM and CPU. These efforts have won him and his collaborators many awards, including best paper and best practical paper at IEEE S&P, three Pwnies in the most innovative research category at BlackHat, a Dutch Veni and a SERI-funded ERC Starting Grant.
