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Showing posts from June, 2018

What is RAMPAGE Attack? Why does it Affect Every Android Since 2012

rampage-attack-android-rowhammer-bit-flipping. No matter how secure Google calls its mobile operating system, it seems like  a determined security research could come up with a vulnerability any day. A team of eight researchers has done the same with their exploit having the unauthorized access to Android devices. What is RAMPAGE Attack? In 2012, with the release of Android ICS, Google introduced a new component to the Android kernel called ION that allocates memory for different apps and services. RAMPAGE targets ION, thus, making itself a thread to million of Android devices across the world. However, Android isn't to be blamed entirely. The attack originates out of a fundamental, more of a hardware error in the RAM chip called Rawhammer which works on ARM-based devices. In modern RAM chips, the memory cells are packed very close to each other. This could result in the cells leaking their charge and interact with other cells. Each memory cells contains one memo