Stefan Saroiu of Microsoft Research explores how Rowhammer breaks memory isolation and what modern platforms must do to contain hardware-level attacks.
Rowhammer exposes a fundamental weakness in modern memory architectures, allowing attackers to induce hardware faults that bypass software-based defenses. Once considered a theoretical risk, Rowhammer has evolved into a practical attack vector with implications for cloud infrastructure, virtualized environments and device trust. Its persistence challenges long-standing assumptions about isolation, reliability and hardware abstraction. Addressing the risk requires coordination across hardware design, firmware protections and operating system safeguards, along with new approaches to detection and mitigation that scale across diverse platforms. Ongoing research continues to redefine how memory safety, performance and deployability intersect in real-world systems.
In this session, led by Stefan Saroiu, researcher at Microsoft Research, you will learn:
- How Rowhammer exploits physical properties of DRAM;
- Why software isolation alone cannot prevent memory fault attacks;
- Implications for cloud and multi-tenant computing environments.
Here is the course outline:
Rowhammer Attacks and the Fragility of Modern Memory Security |
Completion
The following certificates are awarded when the course is completed:
 |
CPE Credit Certificate |
