RSAK: Random stream attack for phase change memory in video applications

As an emerging non-volatile memory technology, phase change memory (PCM) is promising as an alternative for traditional memories such as DRAM. In spite of its non-volatility, high density, low standby power, and resilience to soft errors, PCM has a limited write endurance or lifetime, which means that each PCM cell can only be overwritten finite times. More importantly, limited lifetime potentially provides malicious attackers an opportunity to intentionally aggravate write traffic into PCM. In this paper, from the standpoint of attackers, we propose random stream attacks (RSAK) methods for phase change memory used in video applications. Experimental results show that compared to natural video sequences, RSAK incurs higher total write traffic or worsened lifetime. RSAK also gives hints on how to build a more secure PCM in video applications to counter malicious write streams.