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NOTICE UPDATE

NIST has updated the NVD program announcement page with additional information regarding recent concerns and the temporary delays in enrichment efforts.

CVE-2021-42114 Detail

Description

Modern DRAM devices (PC-DDR4, LPDDR4X) are affected by a vulnerability in their internal Target Row Refresh (TRR) mitigation against Rowhammer attacks. Novel non-uniform Rowhammer access patterns, consisting of aggressors with different frequencies, phases, and amplitudes allow triggering bit flips on affected memory modules using our Blacksmith fuzzer. The patterns generated by Blacksmith were able to trigger bitflips on all 40 PC-DDR4 DRAM devices in our test pool, which cover the three major DRAM manufacturers: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. This means that, even when chips advertised as Rowhammer-free are used, attackers may still be able to exploit Rowhammer. For example, this enables privilege-escalation attacks against the kernel or binaries such as the sudo binary, and also triggering bit flips in RSA-2048 keys (e.g., SSH keys) to gain cross-tenant virtual-machine access. We can confirm that DRAM devices acquired in July 2020 with DRAM chips from all three major DRAM vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) are affected by this vulnerability. For more details, please refer to our publication.


Severity



CVSS 3.x Severity and Metrics:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
Base Score:  8.3 HIGH
Vector:  CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Nist CVSS score does not match with CNA score
CNA:  Switzerland Government Common Vulnerability Program
Base Score:  9.0 CRITICAL
Vector:  CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H


NVD Analysts use publicly available information to associate vector strings and CVSS scores. We also display any CVSS information provided within the CVE List from the CNA.

Note: It is possible that the NVD CVSS may not match that of the CNA. The most common reason for this is that publicly available information does not provide sufficient detail or that information simply was not available at the time the CVSS vector string was assigned.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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Hyperlink Resource
https://comsec.ethz.ch/research/dram/blacksmith/ Exploit  Third Party Advisory 
https://comsec.ethz.ch/wp-content/files/blacksmith_sp22.pdf Exploit  Third Party Advisory 
https://github.com/comsec-group/blacksmith Exploit  Third Party Advisory 

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
NVD-CWE-Other Other cwe source acceptance level NIST  
CWE-20 Improper Input Validation Reference acceptance level Switzerland Government Common Vulnerability Program  

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Change History

3 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2021-42114
NVD Published Date:
11/16/2021
NVD Last Modified:
11/29/2021
Source:
Switzerland Government Common Vulnerability Program