Nvidia hackers have demanded a ransom: if their demands are not met, they will publish the entire driver code and other sensitive data online
The group of hackers who infiltrated Nvidia's servers last month are now attempting to sell software that can unlock the hash rate limiters found on the company's flagship graphics cards. A South American hacker group called LAPSUS $ claims they stole a terabyte of data from Nvidia's servers. The criminals have now started selling software - a kind of custom video driver - to remove the mining limiters the company has introduced in its high-end graphics cards. Nvidia said it became aware of the incident on February 23: "We are aware that hackers have stolen employee login credentials, stolen Nvidia proprietary information from our systems and leaked that data online." The hacker group also attempted to extort Nvidia through a Telegram channel. In addition to disclosing software capable of circumventing the limitations introduced to ETH mining in the RTX 3000 series, hackers have also threatened to make sensitive data public. On March 1, PCMag revealed some screenshots from the Telegram channel which stated: "This leak contains highly confidential or secret source code and data from various driver parts of Nvidia, Falcon, LHR and the like." The term LHR refers to "Lite Hash Rate," a limiter the company introduced to dissuade cryptocurrency miners from buying its graphics cards in bulk and allowing gamers - the company's core market - to put hands on these products. The hacker group is also attempting to get Nvidia to pay a ransom, threatening to open-source the drivers and remove all forms of ETH mining restrictions from its high-end graphics cards. It gave the company until March 4 to make a decision. The high prices and scarce availability of graphics cards have plagued PC gamers for two years now. High-end GPUs can cost as little as $ 1,800, and lower spec models are often difficult to find - this has led to a thriving second-hand market, where prices of older graphics cards often exceed their original cost. .
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