Scientific investigation of hardware vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-6202, CVE-2023-39910) enabling ECDSA key recovery from Bitcoin infrastructure via Rowhammer and DRAM interposition attacks.
This research presents a comprehensive analysis of two critical classes of attacks on the hardware memory of modern computer systems using DDR5 memory: Phoenix Rowhammer Attack (CVE-2025-6202) and RAMnesia Attack (CVE-2023-39910) . Both attacks demonstrate fundamental vulnerabilities in the processing and storage of cryptographic material, creating unprecedented compromise vectors for recovering Bitcoin wallet private keys. The research integrates the results of an analysis of attacks on trusted execution environments (TEEs), including Intel SGX, AMD SEV-SNP, and NVIDIA Confidential Computing, demonstrated in the WireTap and TEE.fail attacks disclosed in October 2025. The security of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency ecosystem is based on the fundamental assumption that it is impossible to extract private keys from systems using elliptic curve cryptography (ECDSA) with the secp256k1 curve. However, recent hardware security research conducted by ETH Zürich researchers in collaboration with Google engineers, as well as research groups at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Purdue University, demonstrates that this assumption can be broken not through cryptanalytic attacks on the mathematical foundations of ECDSA, but by exploiting physical and software vulnerabilities in memory management.
In October 2025, the scientific community was confronted with the disclosure of a series of critical vulnerabilities affecting Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) technologies from Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. The WireTap and TEE.fail attacks pose a fundamental threat to the cryptographic security of blockchain infrastructure using hardware security modules based on Intel SGX (Software Guard Extensions) and related technologies. These discoveries provide critical context for understanding the systemic nature of the threats to which modern cryptocurrency infrastructure is vulnerable.
Scientific classification: DRAM Bus Passive Interposition Attack with Deterministic Encryption Exploitation is a physical side-channel attack on a trusted execution environment using a deterministic memory encryption oracle.
Phoenix Rowhammer is an evolution of classic physical memory attacks that exploits electromagnetic interference between DRAM cells to induce controlled bit-flips in critical memory regions containing ECDSA nonce values. Rowhammer is a hardware flaw in modern DRAM chips in which repeated access to specific memory rows (called “hammering”) causes electromagnetic interference, leading to bit inversions in physically adjacent memory rows. This effect is due to the ever-decreasing technological size of memory cells and increasing transistor density, making modern DDR5 chips more susceptible to electrical interference between adjacent cells.
RAMnesia attacks , in turn, focus on exploiting memory management flaws in cryptographic libraries, where private keys and seed phrases remain in unclared RAM buffers after cryptographic operations are completed. Critical vulnerability CVE-2023-39910 , also known as “Milk Sad,” in the libbitcoin Explorer library led to the compromise of thousands of Bitcoin wallets and the theft of over $900,000 .
The WireTap attack exploits a fundamental architectural vulnerability in the Intel SGX deterministic memory encryption engine, which uses the AES-XTS (Advanced Encryption Standard — XEX-based Tweaked Codebook Mode with Ciphertext Stealing) algorithm. Determinism means that identical data written to the same physical memory address always produces identical ciphertext. This property allows an attacker to construct a cryptographic oracle to recover secret keys.
Researchers have developed a passive DIMM (Dual In-line Memory Module) interposer that physically installs between the processor and the DDR4/DDR5 memory module. The device is constructed from readily available aftermarket components: a DIMM riser board, tweezers, and a soldering iron. The key innovation is slowing down the high-speed memory bus by modifying the DIMM metadata, allowing the use of legacy and inexpensive logic analyzers to capture traffic. The hardware costs less than $50 , making the attack accessible to a wide range of attackers.
