Researchers from ETH Zürich and Google have unveiled “Phoenix,” a new RowHammer attack that successfully bypasses DDR5 memory protections in as little as 109 seconds. Targeting SK Hynix DDR5 chips, Phoenix is capable of achieving privilege escalation and root access on production systems, demonstrating its potential threat by circumventing advanced Target Row Refresh defenses.
Despite the enhanced resistance of DDR5 memory to traditional RowHammer attacks, Phoenix leverages DRAM cell corruption through repetitive access to specific memory rows. This allows attackers to gain access to sensitive information stored on the system, posing significant security risks.
Particularly alarming is the attack’s ability to target critical cryptographic keys, such as RSA-2048, while escalating privileges via the sudo binary. Testing has confirmed that all DDR5 chips manufactured by SK Hynix between 2021 and 2024 are vulnerable, with AMD Zen 4 processors identified as a specific affected platform. In response to the issue, the vulnerability has been logged as CVE-2025-6202, receiving a severity rating of 7.1 on the CVSS scale.
To address these security concerns, AMD has proactively released BIOS updates as potential mitigations, emphasizing the importance of staying vigilant against evolving cyber threats and maintaining up-to-date system defenses.

Collections

Researchers discovered Phoenix, a new RowHammer attack that bypasses DDR5 memory protections in 109 seconds, affecting SK Hynix chips from 2021-2024. The attack achieves privilege escalation and root access on production systems, targets cryptographic keys like RSA-2048, and particularly affects AMD Zen 4 processors. Assigned CVE-2025-6202 with CVSS 7.1 severity, AMD has released BIOS updates as mitigation.

New Phoenix RowHammer Attack Compromises DDR5 Memory Protections