Graphics card manufacturer Nvidia has been infiltrated by a South American hacking group that is now threatening the company to release sensitive data.
After Ethereum went live in 2015, users started sweeping enormous amounts of Nvidia graphics cards (GPUs) to build ETH mining rigs, while some stocked up on GPUs to sell them later at a higher price. In any case, initial investments into Nvidia graphics cards were highly profitable.
The initial report on the attack was given by the Telegraph about Nvidia getting hit by a cyberattack, leaving critical areas such as emails and tools vulnerable to hackers. While then, Nvidia’s team didn’t know whether any data was compromised, some of the company’s software went offline for a couple of days.
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Even though the Telegraph speculated that the hack was related to the war in Ukraine, that was swiftly debunked. Several criminal intelligence accounts on Twitter posted screenshots of one Telegram group, where South American hackers who call themselves LAPSUS$ were leaking "password hashes from all Nvidia employees" and threatened to expose RTX GPU data.
The group claimed that they’ve extracted 1TB of the company’s data.
Funnily enough, LAPSUS$ reported that Nvidia managed to retaliate by infecting their computers with ransomware in an attempt to prevent the hackers from posting sensitive information and code to the public. However, it is very unlikely that a large corporation would send out a ransomware hack, even if it was targeted at the hackers themselves.
Later on March 1st, a report by PCMag confirmed that LAPSUS$ was leaking Nvidia’s data that contained GPU source codes, LHR firmware, etc. With the leaks happening in parts, the hacker group is looking to get paid by Nvidia in crypto or they will release the LHR Bypass.
The LHR Bypass, according to the group, would allow mining rig developers to crack the hash rate limiter that has been put on Nvidia GPUs to restrict miners from sweeping all the graphics cards. However, with the limiter gone, miners would most likely start stocking up on Nvidia cards, and the prices of GPUs would blow up even more.
GPU Ethereum mining has been a plague to regular customers who just want to purchase a graphics card for gaming, inflating the prices by unimaginable amounts.
However, creators of Ethereum promised that the Merge will eliminate ETH’s Proof-of-Work model, and move towards a staking mechanism that doesn’t require mining. At that point, GPU prices will most likely crash, with miners probably selling off their equipment for cheap, just like after the blanket ban in China.
