New DRAM Scrambling Attack Exposes CPU’s Most Protected Memory Zones

A new attack technique that manipulates a computer’s memory controller to bypass some of the strongest hardware security boundaries built into modern processors, including protections around System Management Mode, the Platform Security Processor, and CPU microcode .

The research, published as an open-source project called skitter-creek-bath-salts on GitHub by Security researcher Christopher Domas, has unveiled a striking attack targeting a layer of the system beneath almost every existing defense mechanism: the DRAM controller’s address-translation logic.

Every physical address a CPU generates eventually passes through this controller, which remaps it into raw memory coordinates a specific bank, rank, row, and column inside the DIMM.