The latest victim of a major ransomware attack appears to be Nvidia, as the tech giant confirmed that had been hacked. A group called LAPSUS$ took credit for hacking the company, claiming that they had accessed 1TB of sensitive and confidential information, with the intent to leak it to the public. According to initial reports, Nvidia had been hit with a ransomware attack, though an official statement from the company itself claims that it had been a security breach instead. Nvidia says it, "does not anticipate any disruption to our business or our ability to serve our customers as a result of the incident." despite leaks beginning to circulate online.

LAPSUS$ began to make demands saying they would refrain from posting more of the leak online if Nvidia followed their orders, which include making their GPU drivers open-source. The hacking group said the company has until Friday, March 4th to meet their requirements, otherwise, they will post "the complete silicon, graphics, ad computer chipset files for all recent Nvidia GPUs, including the RTX 3090 TI, and upcoming revisions".

As for what the hackers have already posted online in order to force Nvidia's hand, it seems like files relating to their exclusive Deep Learning Super Sampling 2.2 AI technology have been leaked. According to those who have gone through the leak, there are also files regarding an "NVN2", a possible successor to the NVN API used in the Nintendo Switch. While there is nothing concrete in the data, it has gotten online discourse about the theoretical Switch Pro brewing again once more.

NVIDIA leaks have "nvn2", which seems to be the graphics api for the Switch Pro, based on Ampere with ray tracing support and DLSS 2.2 pic.twitter.com/k6nEr31CcY

— Nikki™ (@NWPlayer123) March 1, 2022

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[diggeloid]

Wow I generally hate these kinds of hacks because they're always either by obnoxious assholes doing it for their ego, or straight up scumbags trying to steal money, but this... I can get behind this. Nvidia open sourcing their drivers would help literally everyone and have zero negative implications for Nvidia's business.

And if trade secrets do get leaked and they lose their competitive advantage because of it, that's better for consumers since it would potentially improve competitor's products and lead to more choice for consumers, and lower prices (after the mining apocalypse comes to save us)

 

[AngryCinnabon]

At least this isn't harming the userbase for the most part, if they threatened to leak personal info of accounts etc i'd have an issue with this, and the goal of this is pretty fair all things considered.

 

[CTR640]

Probably.

Super Switch Pro ;D

Super Ultra instimk Switch 2.5 ;D

 

[Sakuraibr]

To also note:

- Lapsus$ is a brazilian hacker organization. They previously hacked Ministry of Health of Brazil and all sources indicate they are composed of far-right, possibly anti-vax, people.
- Soon after Nvidia reportedly responded with a ransomware in their servers, rendering a good portion of the data + their work to be lost (source).
- The data lost seems to originate from a VM (Virtual Machine) from them.

 

[cearp]

Great, I hope it works and we get the open source drivers!

 

[djpannda]

I wish these hackers would go after the current administration, The world Economic Forum, Soros, and a few others. Do some good. Might as well hit BLM while you are at it because they don't confess anything they're up to.

lol....Wrong section for Racist Political talk

 

[IC_]

Wow I generally hate these kinds of hacks because they're always either by obnoxious assholes doing it for their ego, or straight up scumbags trying to steal money, but this... I can get behind this. Nvidia open sourcing their drivers would help literally everyone and have zero negative implications for Nvidia's business.

And if trade secrets do get leaked and they lose their competitive advantage because of it, that's better for consumers since it would potentially improve competitor's products and lead to more choice for consumers, and lower prices (after the mining apocalypse comes to save us)

I'd agree, but the reality is that even if Nvidia decided out of nowhere that they want to do it, making the drivers open-source would require a lot of planning, work, and likely also coming to agreements with some external companies or people on some things, so this group is in my opinion is taking it too far by demanding it to be done within just a few days. I'd bet that this just won't happen.

 

[langston]

I wish these hackers would go after the current administration, The world Economic Forum, Soros, and a few others. Do some good. Might as well hit BLM while you are at it because they don't confess anything they're up to.

Look I found a trump man on gbatemp lol, too many black, whites, Asians, etc here for you to feel safe lol. Go send your black hate and trump love back to 4c and grow up.

 

[eduall]

It's the new console called: Nintendo Reality!

 

[gnmmarechal]

They probably injected a code in the next gen Switch 2 GPU so that it will be hacked just like Tegra. Good news overall

No, they probably didn't.

 

[SaulFemm]

Switch Pro?

I love that there is a whole article there about a major company being leaked and these are the only two words anyone is gonna read

 

[64bitmodels]

Fucking based

 

[diggeloid]

I'd agree, but the reality is that even if Nvidia decided out of nowhere that they want to do it, making the drivers open-source would require a lot of planning, work, and likely also coming to agreements with some external companies or people on some things, so this group is in my opinion is taking it too far by demanding it to be done within just a few days. I'd bet that this just won't happen.

For sure, and it's also unlikely that they'd do it under pressure from hackers like this since it'd embolden future hackers to target them.

But even though the common advice is to not pay ransomware demands, a lot of companies do it anyways out of desperation. So who knows?

 

[K3Nv2]

Probably.

Super Switch Pro ;D

Switch drift pro technology so advanced we'll charge you an extra $100 for replacement drift cons to make it worse.

 

[Dr_Faustus]

One potential problem with their threat is that outside of places like China, NK and maybe Russia, they’ll be useless for actual use similar to the Gigaleaks for emulators.

Although it would be nice if Nvidia did comply, even if it’s not GPL but still useful for e.g. Linux.

China can definitely benefit from this and make their own if they wanted, even sell them and if cheap enough might even be worth importing over compared to the official domestic ones. It could very much hurt Nvidia on that basis alone.

I'd agree, but the reality is that even if Nvidia decided out of nowhere that they want to do it, making the drivers open-source would require a lot of planning, work, and likely also coming to agreements with some external companies or people on some things, so this group is in my opinion is taking it too far by demanding it to be done within just a few days. I'd bet that this just won't happen.

They can make a formal annoucement of it and state it will be happening in the coming weeks/months. That alone should be enough to please the hackers that it is happening. Unless they want to go the way of a Phone OEM and promise something only to never deliver, which will probably screw them over in the end. Nvidia will have to commit to the promise and deliver.

 

[tech3475]

China can definitely benefit from this and make their own if they wanted, even sell them and if cheap enough might even be worth importing over compared to the official domestic ones. It could very much hurt Nvidia on that basis alone.

I suspect shady crypto-mining would end up being one use of these. Yes it's restricted in China, but last I heard it moved elsewhere.

Would be funny in a way if 'GPU piracy' ends up indirectly benefiting PC users.

 

[Dr_Faustus]

Switch drift pro technology so advanced we'll charge you an extra $100 for replacement drift cons to make it worse.

Honestly speaking knowing Nintendo the Next Switch will probably be designed like the Switch Lite where the controls do not slide out of the console anymore but instead it can just be docked with a set of larger controllers for the home console user.

I honestly cannot see the current form factor of the Switch being something worth improving on given that most people (at least most I know anyways) do not use the motion control system when the unit is not docked, and portable use basically using the system in the same way the the Switch Lite exists. Given the biggest issue with the Switch is always involving the joycons, the best way to fixing that is to just eliminate the issue entirely and just offer a system with two different options of control rather than one morphic controller.

Sure it might eliminate some of the other interesting options of control while portable, but again I rarely ever see those options be used when not docked.

I suspect shady crypto-mining would end up being one use of these. Yes it's restricted in China, but last I heard it moved elsewhere.

Would be funny in a way if 'GPU piracy' ends up indirectly benefiting PC users.

I mean Chia coin exists but that uses different technology not to mention also is not nearly as useful these days.

I can see the Chinese government using them to mine, but that's because the government operates on a different principal of laws than its citizens do. That said if they put a mine limiter on them in the same way Nvidia did then the situation is moot and they will just have to profit in selling them which will probably not be an issue at all over there.

 

[WG481]

Honestly, I'm on NVIDIA's side here. Their graphics stuff is legendary, and it only makes sense to license it. This isn't even a cool, significant hack, it's just cybercrime.

 

[HideoKojima]

No, they probably didn't.

Do you know who I am?

 

[Jayro]

I posted about this in the user-submitted news yesterday...

So thanks for that.