Researchers from Google’s Project Zero have released information about a new attack based on flipping bits in DDR3 memory. The attack uses approach called Rowhammer which was devised last year by a team from Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs. It is based on repeated writing to and reading from a part of memory in a very short time which causes flipping values of bits in adjacent memory (the flipping is made possible by interaction between adjacent memory cells caused by their close proximity).

Dramatic information security incidents and news were unfortunately fairly common in February – we will shortly remember three of the most interesting ones. Most attention was probably gained by a story about an alleged theft of massive amount of encryption keys used in mobile communication from the network of Dutch company Gemalto (a major SIM card supplier) by NSA and GCHQ. The keys could be used to decrypt live communication and also, for example, remotely inject malicious code into end devices.