--- title: "Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/16/using-memory-errors-to-attack-a-virtual-machine.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/16/using-memory-errors-to-attack-a-virtual-machine.html" published: "2003-03-16T06:25:00" updated: "2003-03-16T06:25:00" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine Posted by michael on Saturday March 15, @03:03AM from the no-one-is-safe dept. gillus writes \"A very cool scientific paper from Appel and Govindavajhala that explains how…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine By Roy Osherove March 16, 2003 **Historical article** · Originally published March 16, 2003; technical details may be outdated.
Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine
[![Security](https://osherove.com/img/ext/images.slashdot.org_topics_topicsecurity.gif)](http://developers.slashdot.org/search.pl?topic=172)**Posted by michael on Saturday March 15, @03:03AM** **from the no-one-is-safe dept.** gillus writes _"A very cool [scientific paper](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sudhakar/papers/memerr.pdf) from Appel and Govindavajhala that explains how virtual machines like java or .Net can be exploited. How? Quite simple, bomb your DRAM chip with X-rays... or more simply with 50-watt spotlight, as the authors [demonstrate](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sudhakar/talks/memerr.ppt). Definitively worth a read!"_ **(** [**Read More...**](http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/03/14/214257.shtml?tid=172) | **[151](http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/03/14/214257.shtml?tid=172) of [223](http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/14/214257&mode=thread&tid=172&threshold=-1)** comments **)** **\[via [SlashDot](http://slashdot.org/developers/)\]** **hmmm... interesting.....** --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/