Linux Kernel (x86-64) - Rowhammer Privilege Escalation

                							

                Sources:
http://googleprojectzero.blogspot.ca/2015/03/exploiting-dram-rowhammer-bug-to-gain.html
https://code.google.com/p/google-security-research/issues/detail?id=283

Full PoC: https://github.com/offensive-security/exploitdb-bin-sploits/raw/master/bin-sploits/36310.tar.gz

This is a proof-of-concept exploit that is able to gain kernel
privileges on machines that are susceptible to the DRAM "rowhammer"
problem.  It runs as an unprivileged userland process on x86-64 Linux.
It works by inducing bit flips in page table entries (PTEs).

For development purposes, the exploit program has a test mode in which
it induces a bit flip by writing to /dev/mem.  qemu_runner.py will run
the exploit program in test mode in a QEMU VM.  It assumes that
"bzImage" (in the current directory) is a Linux kernel image that was
built with /dev/mem enabled (specifically, with the the
CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM option disabled).

Mark Seaborn
mseaborn@chromium.org
March 2015