GPU Rowhammer Attack Grants Root Shell Access, Researchers Find

Security researchers have demonstrated a novel attack vector, dubbed GPUBreach, that leverages GPU Rowhammer vulnerabilities to achieve root shell access on affected systems. According to Cyber Threat Intelligence, this breakthrough bypasses traditional security mitigations by exploiting the physical memory access patterns of modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

The technique involves manipulating the DRAM chips used by GPUs, causing bit flips in adjacent memory locations. This is particularly concerning as GPUs often share system memory or have dedicated high-bandwidth memory closely integrated with the CPU’s memory space. Cyber Threat Intelligence highlighted that by carefully crafting specific workloads and timing sequences, attackers can induce these bit flips in critical operating system kernel memory, leading to privilege escalation and full system control.