Art der Publikation: Beitrag in Sammelwerk

NVM-Flip: Non-Volatile-Memory BitFlips on the System Level

Autor(en):

Staudigl, Felix; Thoma, Jan Philipp; Niesler, Christian; Sturm, Karl; Pelke, Rebecca; Germek, Dominik; Joseph, Jan Moritz; Güneysu, Tim; Davi, Lucas; Leupers, Rainer

Titel des Sammelbands:

Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems

Seiten:

11-20

Verlag:

Association for Computing Machinery

Ort(e):

Porto, Portugal

Veröffentlichung:

2024

ISBN:

9798400705557

Schlagworte:

disturbance errors, envm, neurohammer, reram, thermal corsstalk

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

doi:10.1145/3643650.3658606

Zitation:

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Kurzfassung

Emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs) are promising candidates to substitute conventional memories due to their low access latency, high integration density, and non-volatility. These superior properties stem from the memristor representing the centerpiece of each memory cell and is branded as the fourth fundamental circuit element. Memristors encode information in the form of its resistance by altering the physical characteristics of their filament. Hence, each memristor can store multiple bits increasing the memory density and positioning it as a potential candidate to replace DRAM and SRAM-based memories, such as caches. However, new security risks arise with the benefits of these emerging technologies, like the recent NeuroHammer attack, which allows adversaries to deliberately flip bits in ReRAMs. While NeuroHammer has been shown to flip single bits within memristive crossbar arrays, the system-level impact remains unclear. Considering the significance of the Rowhammer attack on conventional DRAMs, NeuroHammer can potentially cause crucial damage to applications taking advantage of emerging memory technologies. To answer this question, we introduce NVgem5, a versatile system-level simulator based on gem5. NVgem5 is capable of injecting bit-flips in eNVMs originating from NeuroHammer. Our experiments evaluate the impact of the NeuroHammer attack on main and cache memories. In particular, we demonstrate a single-bit fault attack on cache memories leaking the secret key used during the computation of RSA signatures. Our findings highlight the need for improved hardware security measures to mitigate the risk of hardware-level attacks in computing systems based on eNVMs.