Hardware Vulnerabilities

Hardware vulnerabilities are most often the result of hardware design flaws. For example, the type of memory called RAM basically consists of lots of capacitors (a component which can hold an electrical charge) installed very close to one another. However, it was soon discovered that, due to their close proximity, changes applied to one of these capacitors could influence neighbor capacitors. Based on this design flaw, an exploit called Rowhammer was created. By repeatedly accessing (hammering) a row of memory, the Rowhammer exploit triggers electrical interferences that eventually corrupt the data stored inside the RAM.

Meltdown and Spectre

Google security researchers discovered Meltdown and Spectre, two hardware vulnerabilities that affect almost all central processing units (CPUs) released since 1995 within desktops, laptops, servers, smartphones, smart devices and cloud services.

Attackers exploiting these vulnerabilities can read all memory from a given system (Meltdown), as well as data handled by other applications (Spectre). The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability exploitations are referred to as side-channel attacks (information is gained from the implementation of a computer system). They have the ability to compromise large amounts of memory data because the attacks can be run multiple times on a system with very little possibility of a crash or other error.

Hardware vulnerabilities are specific to device models and are not generally exploited through random compromising attempts. While hardware exploits are more common in highly targeted attacks, traditional malware protection and good physical se