xoreaxeaxeax/skitter-creek-bath-saltsUnlocking _everything_ on the CPU with DRAM scrambling
Unlocking everything on the CPU with DRAM scrambling — PSP, C6, microcode, SMM, and anything else the specs left out.
&x == &x.
Usually.
Poke the DRAM controller and an address can be made to land wherever you want in
memory. skitter-creek-bath-salts modifies the bottom layers of the memory
hierarchy to rewire the physical DRAM address translations. This scrambles
platform memory, exposing protected regions of DRAM — carveouts invisible even
to the kernel. When the address translations break, so do the security
primitives built on them, and we unlock everything.
Developed and tested on AMD Family 16h CPUs, the last generation whose
datasheets document the DRAM controller's translation registers — and show that
they can't be locked. 17h and beyond simply leave this information out. The
odyssey of *p is similar across generations and
architectures, and the underlying transforms extend even to ARM, RISC-V, and
beyond; skitter-creek-bath-salts shows us only how to begin.
*pIt's a long way down.
Memory is built on layers of abstraction so deep they become almost absurd. When
your code dereferences *p, it appears to access the DRAM at p. It does not —
p is a virtual address, and before a single bit of DRAM is touched, it must
survive the gauntlet below:
── CPU core / MMU ─────────────────────────────────────────────────
┌─ VA ← 64-bit virtual address from load/store
│
└> canonical-form check ──────────────────────┐ ← bits [63:48] sign-extend from bit 47
┌─ segment base add <─────────────────────────┘ ← FS.base / GS.base (MSR_FS_BASE, MSR_GS_BASE)
│
└> TLB probe ─────────────────────────────────┐ ← tagged by PCID (host) / VPID (guest)
hit → physical address k │
miss → engage hardware page walker │
┌─ page walk (from CR3) <─────────────────────┘ ← walked only on TLB miss
│ PML5[VA 56:48] ← only if CR4.LA57
│ PML4[VA 47:39]
│ PDPT[VA 38:30] ← 1 GiB leaf possible
│ PD [VA 29:21] ← 2 MiB leaf possible
│ PT [VA 20:12]
│ PTE ← R/W · U/S · NX · A/D · PAT · PCD · PWT · G
│
└> per-level checks ──────────────────────────┐ ← evaluated at every level of the walk
privilege (U/S) │ ← CPL vs PTE.U/S
write (R/W) │ ← + CR0.WP
execute (NX) │ ← EFER.NXE
SMEP / SMAP │ ← CR4.SMEP · CR4.SMAP · EFLAGS.AC
protection keys │ ← PKRU (user) · IA32_PKRS (supervisor)
┌─ A/D bit update <───────────────────────────┘ ← locked RMW on PTE
│
└> if guest: EPT / NPT re-walk ───────────────┐ ← each guest-PA above re-walked
EPT-PML4 → EPT-PDPT → EPT-PD → EPT-PT │ ← + EPT memory-type override
⇒ ~5× walks per single guest walk │
┌─ TLB shootdown IPIs <───────────────────────┘ ← invlpg broadcast to peer vCPUs
│
│ ── IOMMU (chipset / I/O fabric) ──────────────────────────────────
│
└> if device-initiated, IOMMU page walk ──────┐ ← VT-d / AMD-Vi: device-ID → domain → tables
│
┌── **physical address k** <─────────────────┘
│
│ ── CPU core / MMU — memory-type resolution ────────────────────────
│
└> MTRR range match ──────────────────────────┐ ← IA32_MTRR_DEF_TYPE + fixed/variable MTRRs
┌─ PAT entry select <─────────────────────────┘ ← IA32_PAT[ PTE.PAT:PCD:PWT ]
│
└> effective memory type ─────────────────────┐ ← { WB, WT, WC, WP, UC-, UC }
│
── CPU uncore — caches & coherence ────────────────────────────────
│
┌─ L1-D probe <───────────────────────────────┘ ← VIPT, per-core
│
└> L2 probe ──────────────────────────────────┐ ← per-core / per-CCX
┌─ LLC probe + directory consult <────────────┘ ← shared, sliced
│
└> snoop / coherence ─────────────────────────┐ ← MESI / MOESI broadcast
intra-socket │ ← broadcast to peer cores
inter-socket │ ← QPI · UPI · Infinity Fabric · CXL.cache
home-node directory response │ ← data | intervention | abort
│
── system data fabric / interconnect ──────────────────────────────
│
┌─ if MMIO range or sub-4 GiB MMIO hole <─────┘ ← uncore/data fabric posted/non-posted txn
│ → device BAR; done
│
└> else DRAM-bound: data fabric / mesh ───────┐ ← AMD DF · Intel mesh-or-ring uncore
│
┏━━ ── MCT / IMC (memory controller) ────────────────────────────────
W ┃ ┌─ DRAM hole remap <──────────────────────────┘ ← high-memory remap above TOM
E ┃ │
┃ └> memory-region exclusion remap ─────────────┐ ← reserved / protected ranges
┃ ┌─ channel interleave hash <──────────────────┘ ← XOR of selected PA bits → channel
A ┃ │
R ┃ └> rank interleave hash ──────────────────────┐ ← XOR of selected PA bits → rank
E ┃ ┌─ bank interleave hash <─────────────────────┘ ← XOR of selected PA bits → bank
┃ │
┃ └> bank swizzle / XOR scramble ───────────────┐ ← vendor- and BIOS-configurable
H ┃ ┌─ chip-select normalize (DCT) <──────────────┘ ← per-rank CS line
E ┃ │ rank → CS map
R ┃ │
E ┃ └> sub-channel select ────────────────────────┐ ← DDR5 / LPDDR5 only
┗━━ │
│
DRAM coordinates <─────────────────────────┘ ← bank group · bank · row (RAS) · column (CAS)
This project works at the deepest levels of the *p pipeline, the MCT/DCT layer
— where a physical address from the data fabric/interconnect enters the memory
controller and is rewritten one final time into the raw DRAM coordinates that are
issued to the DIMM.
Physical addresses are really more of a suggestion.
xor dword [0xf80c2094], 0x00400000
That's the exploit. All of it.
One bit-flip in the DRAM controller rewires the bottom of the *p pipeline, and
the data that was at &x is now somewhere else mid-flight. Suddenly &x != &x.
Every mechanism the CPU, firmware, uncore, and chipset use to wall off protected
memory sits above the memory controller, and none of it sees what happens below.
The fences guard physical addresses, not DRAM coordinates; rearrange the
coordinates and the barriers above never notice.