Alexander Dinaburg

Another one to add: if N is big enough, even statistically improbable events like single bit flips in memory become likely or even nigh-certain. For example, if you set up a bunch of fake domains that differ from real domains in a single bit, you might get upwards of a dozen hits per day from clients clearly trying to reach the real service - this is called Bitsquatting: http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html

For example, setting up the server "mic2osoft.com" (a one-bit-flip error from microsoft.com) yielded this request:

msgr.dlservice.mic2osoft.com 213.178.224.xxx "GET /download/A/6/1/A616CCD4-B0CA-4A3D-B975-3EDB38081B38/ar/wlsetup-cvr.exe HTTP/1.1" 404 268 "Microsoft BITS/6.6"

This is a machine trying to download some kind of update package from the wrong server because somewhere in its memory the "r" from "microsoft.com" got flipped to a 2 (0x72 -> 0x32).

Sorry, I consider this to be a very poor defence.

You might trust the site you go to; but that's not all the javascript that gets loaded, there are includes that a lot of web developers will use for convenience, there are ad networks and there are bugs that could allow some unintended javascript to get loaded (like with bit-squatting[0]).

It's not a given that you're safe running javascript if you only visit sites you trust. Even if you are INCREDIBLY sanitary, which I would argue is unrealistic (just check your history and you'll see that you probably visit many sites off of a google search).

[0]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8s1JwtNas / http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html

Bitsquatting refers to registering a domain name one bit different from the target domain name. The intent is that a memory error will cause someone to get the bitsquatted site instead of the legitimate one.

"During the logging period there were a total of 52,317 bitsquat requests from 12,949 unique IP addresses. When not counting 3 events that caused extraordinary amounts of traffic, an average of 59 unique IPs per day made HTTP requests to my 32 bitsquat domains."

http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html

Overheating can be a cause of bit errors, and heat is a concern in mobile devices and laptops.

People don't realize how frequent it could be because most of the time you don't see any of the consequences.

Here's a "funny" consequence of bit flips: bit squatting.

It's about exploiting a bit flip before a DNS query: you register the proper DNS domain and you wait for machines to wrongly contact you because they got the name wrong.

http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html
http://dinaburg.org/data/DC19_Dinaburg_Presentation.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8s1JwtNas

Just saw this was already posted below...

This reminds me of Bitsquatting, which is like typosquatting but uses domains one bit-flip away instead of one mistyped letter away.[0] In a small experiment, for some popular domains, the author reportedly got a lot of hits.

In the associated DEFCON talk, the author notes that even if you use ECC memory, it's unlikely that the DRAM in your hard drives does too.[1]

0: http://dinaburg.org/bitsquatting.html

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WcHsT97suU