New DRAM Scrambling Attack Exposes CPU’s Most Protected Memory Zones

A new attack technique that manipulates a computer’s memory controller to bypass some of the strongest hardware security boundaries built into modern processors, including protections around System Management Mode, the Platform Security Processor, and CPU microcode. The research, published as an open-source project called skitter-creek-bath-salts on GitHub by Security researcher Christopher Domas, has unveiled a striking attack targeting a layer of the system beneath almost every existing defense mechanism: the DRAM controller’s address-translation logic. Every physical address a CPU generates eventually passes through this controller, which remaps it into raw memory coordinates a specific bank, rank, row, and column...

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