GoKawiilUnlocking 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 reaches into the deepest level of the memory hierarchy and rewires the physical DRAM address translations, to scramble platform memory and release its most guarded secrets — the specialized carveouts invisible even to the kernel. When the translations break, the walls built on them collapse, and we unlock everything.
Target
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.
The odyssey of *p
It'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)
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