New GPUThor Rowhammer Defeats ECC on NVIDIA RTX A6000 to Gain Host Root Access

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New GPUThor Rowhammer Defeats ECC on NVIDIA RTX A6000 to Gain Host Root Access

Thehackernews •[email protected] (The Hacker News) • August 27, 2026

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GPUThor Attack Bypasses ECC on NVIDIA GPUs for Root Access Researchers from the University of Toronto have revealed a new Rowhammer attack named GPUThor that can bypass ECC protections on NVIDIA GPUs, specifically targeting Ampere-class models like the RTX A4000 and A6000. This attack allows for denial-of-service (DoS) and root-level privilege escalation by corrupting GPU page tables, enabling unauthorized memory access. GPUThor achieves significantly higher bit-flip rates than previous attacks, generating between 72,000 and 377,000 flips per GB, which is 4,548 to 23,597 times higher than the earlier GPUHammer method. The attack can induce a DoS state, causing the GPU to reset and terminate workloads. The researchers noted that even with ECC enabled, GPUThor can generate double-bit errors that ECC detects but cannot correct, leading to data corruption. The implications for AI model training are severe, as successful attacks could compromise model accuracy. The attack details were published on August 26, 2026, and have raised significant concerns among users of affected NVIDIA GPUs. 5 sources 57

Extracted Entities

Platforms (1)

Nvidia RTX A6000

Tools (1)

Vulnerabilities (1)