Nvidia in late February said that it was examining a suspected cyber-attack that had damaged elements of its online business. LAPSUS$ is the hacker organization that has claimed responsibility. It was also claimed for stealing 1TB of data from Nvidia servers. Nvidia is a company based in the USA and designs graphics processing units (GPUs). According to available information, the hacker group is now willing to sell the data, as well as information to unlock Nvidia GPUs to use for crypto mining. The hackers claim to have created software capable of easily breaking Nvidia’s “Lite Hash Rate” restriction for its RTX 3000 series graphics cards.
Nvidia imposed an “Ethereum hash rate limitation” on its flagship GPU models in early 2021 in an effort to restrict crypto miners from purchasing up all of its cards and leaving a few for gamers. The initiative failed because miners picked up outdated GPUs that were still strong enough to mine, worsening the scarcity and driving up GPU costs.
The hackers have already leaked 19GB of data, which contains the source code for such GPU drivers as well as a solution for the hash rate limiter. The hacker group is demanding from Nvidia to remove the limitation from all of its RTX 3000 devices via a software upgrade to its customers. It promised to publish further information if the company did not cooperate.
Graphics cards still are wildly overpriced and also in short supply, making gamers enraged at miners. For the past two years, the situation has been worsened by a two-pronged problem: pandemic-induced supply shortages and crypto miners snatching them all up.
