GPUThor is a new Rowhammer attack that can bypass ECC protections on certain NVIDIA GPUs, causing denial-of-service and even root-level privilege escalation. Researchers from the University of Toronto demonstrated the issue on Ampere-class workstation cards and said NVIDIA has issued guidance to reduce the risk. #GPUThor #NVIDIA #UniversityofToronto #RTXA6000 #RTXA5000 #RTXA4500 #RTXA4000
Keypoints
- GPUThor can bypass ECC protections on NVIDIA GPUs.
- The attack causes DoS and can lead to root-level privilege escalation.
- Researchers demonstrated the issue on Ampere-class GPUs with GDDR6 memory.
- GPUThor uses a non-uniform hammering pattern to evade TRR mitigations.
- NVIDIA recommends SYS-ECC, IOMMU/DMA isolation, and limiting untrusted workloads.