Cyber security in industrial control systems (ICS):a survey of rowhammer vulnerability

Increasing dependence on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and especially on the Internet in Industrial Control Systems (ICS) has made these systems the primary target of cyber-attacks. As ICS are extensively used in Critical Infrastructures (CI), this makes CI more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and their protection becomes an important issue. On the other hand, cyberattacks can exploit not only software but also physics; that is, they can target the fundamental physical aspects of computation. The newly discovered RowHammer (RH) fault injection attack is a serious vulnerability targeting hardware on reliability and security of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory). Studies on this vulnerability issue raise serious security concerns. The purpose of this study was to overview the RH phenomenon in DRAMs and its possible security risks on ICSs and to discuss a few possible realistic RH attack scenarios for ICSs. The results of the study revealed that RH is a serious security threat to any computer-based system having DRAMs, and this also applies to ICS.