Source URL: https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/dram-emfi.html
Source: Hacker News
Title: Can You Get Root with Only a Cigarette Lighter?
Feedly Summary: Comments
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: This text discusses hardware fault injection techniques, specifically targeting memory exploitation via electromagnetic interference (EMI) in laptops to facilitate local privilege escalation on Linux systems. This approach is novel in its low-cost methodology for fault injection, utilizing everyday items to induce hardware faults that can manipulate memory states.
Detailed Description:
The article primarily revolves around the concept of fault injection, particularly in hardware contexts. It details various techniques, equipment, and methodologies employed to exploit memory via fault injection, specifically on laptops. Here’s a breakdown of the content and its significance:
– **Introduction to Fault Injection**:
– Fault injection is a mechanism to find bugs by inducing faults in hardware behavior, allowing the discovery of potential software vulnerabilities.
– Techniques include electromagnetic pulses, lasers, and straightforward yet effective methods using common electronic devices.
– **Cost-effective Techniques**:
– The author mentions creating affordable fault injection setups, emphasizing the use of components like the RP2040-based PicoEMP and piezo-electric igniters for low-budget electromagnetic fault injection (EMFI).
– Detailed experiments showcase how these simple techniques exploit flaws in the DDR bus in laptops.
– **Exploitation Goals**:
– The author aims to develop exploits for local privilege escalation (LPE) by leveraging hardware faults to manipulate memory addresses and objects within the CPython runtime environment.
– A description of crafting a memory access error using faults illustrates how data values can be disrupted to gain unauthorized access to system resources.
– **Intricate Exploit Strategies**:
– The author elaborates on how glitches in memory can allow for arbitrary memory read/write operations.
– The detailed process describes inducing memory errors intentionally to gain control over a function pointer within memory structures of Python objects.
– **Perception of Modern Security**:
– The explanation of modern memory management techniques, such as Virtual Memory and TLB, contextualizes why these exploits are relevant against contemporary operating systems and their security measures.
– The narrative suggests potential future exploits and their applicability to various systems beyond this specific case, raising questions about security in multiple device architectures.
– **Broader Implications**:
– The concept of opposing TPM attestation status with such methods has intriguing implications for user control over computers in contexts like gaming.
– The author invites further exploration into their techniques’ effectiveness across different hardware like DDR4, DDR5, and ARM architectures.
Overall, this content significantly contributes to discussions in hardware security, particularly relevant for security professionals and enthusiasts interested in understanding and mitigating vulnerabilities in physical devices through innovative approaches. It underscores the importance of practical knowledge in hardware design and security principles, illuminating gaps that exist even in modern systems.