Probabilistic tracker management for memory attack mitigation

Abstract

Rowhammer attacks, which are malicious processes that rapidly issue access requests to memory, can impose serious security threats including being used to tamper data, take control of entire systems, and even breach confidentiality. Current solutions to defend against these attacks are limited, as they typically employ a deterministic tracker to track the portions of memory accessed and to mitigate potential attacks accordingly. However, the deterministic nature of these trackers results in their own vulnerability. The present disclosure provides probabilistic tracker management for mitigation of rowhammer attacks and/or other memory attacks in which a row (or other defined portion of memory) is maliciously targeted to disturb contents of neighboring rows, which can prevent these types of attacks that otherwise take advantage of the determinism in prior used tracker designs.