By Chris Harper
Publication Date: 2026-04-03 16:30:00
Users of NVIDIA Ampere-based GPUs equipped with GDDR6 memory beware—new Rowhammer attacks are in the wild that exploit these cards for a full system control hijack. It is not all Ampere GPUs affected, however. The only ones on which the vulnerability has been tested and proven are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX A6000. Researchers also tested the vulnerability on the GeForce RTX 3080, an RTX 4060, two RTX 4060 Tis, and an RTX 5050. For reasons that are currently unclear, however, none of these other GPUs were vulnerable. NVIDIA has, however, incorporated mitigations for Rowhammer attacks in Hopper and Blackwell generation GPU. It’s possible some of these mitigations are also available in other GPUs.
There is still reason to be cautious with other NVIDIA RTX 30 Series GPUs, and NVIDIA Ampere GPUs in general. While GPUs connected to GDDR6X memory seem to be safe, including the newer RTX 40 Series and GDDR7-equipped Blackwell-based RTX 50 Series, there is still a chance other RTX 30 Series GPUs could be exploited. Users concerned about this issue or those that suspect their systems are already compromised, should enable ECC. Doing this mitigates the exploit, but it reduces available memory and overall performance. As such, gamers will likely be reluctant to switch it on, but since the exploits require full system access to execute code, it’s unlikely any typical end user has been affected.
NVIDIA RTX A6000 and NVIDIA RTX 3060 are the only known GPUs…
