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A comment on Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices today despite mitigations. Parent comment

Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by jdmichal on Monday November 15, 2021 @12:07PM (#29229648)
> I'd love to see this code in memory testers like memtest86 so I could send the RAM back if it ever caught a problem like this.

Is this an individual stick bug, or a design bug akin to Spectre? Given that they tested 40 different sticks and seemed to find effective patterns for all of them make me think it's the latter. In which case, just return all your computers?

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by jandrese on Monday November 15, 2021 @12:27PM (#29229916)
Yeah, this is a problem with high density DRAM. Fixes are possible but difficult and expensive. In the cutthroat DRAM market nobody seems willing to put in the engineering effort to develop a solution and then manufacture it. It would have to sell at a premium, in a market where it's difficult to even find ECC memory at times.

The article states that ECC isn't sufficient to solve Rowhammer, but it does make the attack harder. If you are looking for a hardware solution it is your only option currently, even if it is imperfect.

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by seiferteric on Monday November 15, 2021 @01:34PM (#29230791)
I imagine you are right that consumers don't care or know enough to put pressure on manufacturers, but what about big companies like the FANGs? Or Government agencies like NSA etc? What are they doing about it? I imagine intelligence agencies are well aware of the issue and have or are trying to get solutions to protect their own infra.
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by codetrotter on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:33PM (#29231603)
Off topic but shouldn’t FAANG really be referred to as MAAAN now?

Google -> Alphabet

Facebook -> Meta

Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix. MAAAN.

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by somethingwitty1 on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:50PM (#29231809)
Google still exists. Facebook still exists. Meta/Alphabet are mainly holding companies. For example, I received reach outs from recruiters for Google and Facebook today. Not from Meta and Alphabet. Maybe once Meta and Alphabet deliver on things and build brand recognition, it should change. Until then, I'd vote "no".
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by salawat on Monday November 15, 2021 @06:16PM (#29234239)
Now I can add "I have never worked for the MAAAN" with pride on my business cards!

Every now and again I worry I've grown up. Then I realize there is no grown up, just a Matroyshka doll of more and more eclectic subtexts

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by festkal on Monday November 15, 2021 @03:07PM (#29232015)
MANGA

M - Meta A - Apple N - Netflix G - Google A - Amazon

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by gavinray on Monday November 15, 2021 @03:58PM (#29232657)
I'm now adopting this, thanks
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by daniel-thompson on Monday November 15, 2021 @04:37PM (#29233118)
AMANAM

Apple Microsoft Amazon Netflix Alphabet Meta

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by vidarh on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:50PM (#29231810)
If you're doing that: M3AN.
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by tester756 on Monday November 15, 2021 @03:04PM (#29231976)
I like MAGMA more
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by Tempest1981 on Tuesday November 16, 2021 @03:25AM (#29238219)
Right, the idea was to swap Netflix for Microsoft, giving MAGMA or GAMMA:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29042753

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by R0b0t1 on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:23PM (#29231451)
If you detect flips you can send it back, it's violating the advertised interface.
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by 0xffff2 on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:38PM (#29231666)
Sure, but if it's possible to cause bit flips in basically all currently available components, then what's the point? Return all of your RAM and have a non-functional computer?
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by therein on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:50PM (#29231815)
Can't get bit flips on my RAM if I have no RAM.
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by ziddoap on Monday November 15, 2021 @02:40PM (#29231692)
So you just.. Send back all of your RAM all the time because they are all susceptible to bitflips?

This is not a tenable solution.

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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by dboreham on Monday November 15, 2021 @12:54PM (#29230239)
It happened because at some point in the past (around 10 years ago I believe), the memory vendors decided that it was ok to design product with known "pattern sensitivity", because...I suppose they made more money that way and no customer complained loudly. Pattern sensitivity in memory chips is a very old problem, and previously was treated as a fatal design error, fixed and the affected chips used for parking lot infill. But today every chip sold is affected. Basically the same as Boeing and the MAX, just fewer people killed.
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Re:Blacksmith – Rowhammer bit flips on all DRAM devices toda... by myself248 on Monday November 15, 2021 @01:10PM (#29230473)
> Pattern sensitivity in memory chips is a very old problem, and previously was treated as a fatal design error

You seem to know more about this than I do. Where might one go to read more about this? Are there whitepapers, design docs, other resources which could be used to assert positively that the industry used to consider this a defect?

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