NVIDIA GPU Security Flaw: Rowhammer Attack Grants Hackers Full Control

Users of NVIDIA Ampere-based GPUs equipped with GDDR6 memory beware—new Rowhammer attacks are in the wild that exploit these cards for a full system control hijack. It is not all Ampere GPUs affected, however. The only ones on which the vulnerability has been tested and proven are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX A6000. Researchers also tested the vulnerability on the GeForce RTX 3080, an RTX 4060, two RTX 4060 Tis, and an RTX 5050. For reasons that are currently unclear, however, none of these other GPUs were vulnerable. NVIDIA has, however, incorporated mitigations for Rowhammer attacks in Hopper and Blackwell generation GPU. It's possible some of these mitigations are also available in other GPUs.

There is still reason to be cautious with other NVIDIA RTX 30 Series GPUs, and NVIDIA Ampere GPUs in general. While GPUs connected to GDDR6X memory seem to be safe, including the newer RTX 40 Series and GDDR7-equipped Blackwell-based RTX 50 Series, there is still a chance other RTX 30 Series GPUs could be exploited. Users concerned about this issue or those that suspect their systems are already compromised, should enable ECC. Doing this mitigates the exploit, but it reduces available memory and overall performance. As such, gamers will likely be reluctant to switch it on, but since the exploits require full system access to execute code, it's unlikely any typical end user has been affected.


In the past, we've seen Rowhammer for CPUs targeted at DDR4 and DDR3 RAM. For new GPU attacks, dubbed GDDRHammer, GeForge, GPUBreach, Rowhammer forces a bit flip in the memory of the victim's GPU that can subsequently be used to gain full system control. Particularly in the server and workstation environments that the RTX A6000 targets, this can be dangerous for customers and mitigations steps should be taken.

Hopefully, impacted workstation and enterprise users are able to apply the fix as soon as possible, and this type of exploit does not spread to further NVIDIA or AMD GPUs. For RTX 3060 gamers who are worried about the exploit, this may be concerning news, but rest easy--it's not likely individuals will be targeted. Per Ars Technica's coverage, this attack would most likely target cloud environments.