Conjuring Hardware Failures for Cross-ring Privilege Escalation

Explore how to deliberately trigger catastrophic hardware failures through software-only attacks to achieve privilege escalation in this DEF CON 33 conference talk. Learn the mechanics behind Machine Check Exceptions that typically occur during genuine hardware failures like aging I/O devices, cosmic ray bit flips, memory degradation, and CPU fires, and discover how to circumvent traditional fail-safes that normally shut down systems when unrecoverable errors are detected. Understand the process of synthetically creating these fatal hardware events from software rather than waiting for exceptionally rare natural occurrences, and see how to force damaged systems to continue operating instead of shutting down safely. Master techniques for carefully injecting failure signals during privileged CPU operations to disrupt secure transitions, causing cascading system failures that can be exploited for hardware privilege escalation. Gain insights into recovering from supposedly unrecoverable states, allowing systems to continue functioning normally while maintaining a foothold in privileged space, all achieved through software-synthesized hardware failure events. Discover how this attack vector can reveal previously unknown hardware vulnerabilities and explore new research opportunities in machine check exploitation across different technologies and architectures, providing valuable knowledge for both offensive security researchers and defensive practitioners.