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Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#121

Post by saurik »

modeless wrote: post #18
chmod775 wrote: post #5

> So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either: Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret OR Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too! Intere…

No single piece of software has wasted more of my time than Nvidia's drivers, mostly (though not exclusively) on Linux. They've rendered my OS unbootable so many times over the years. So many times I've spent whole days of my life troubleshooting, upgrading, downgrading, configuring, rebooting. Then often reinstalling the OS after their installers mess stuff up in ways that are impossible to even know until they pop…

Linus Torvalds directly addressing NVIDIA (worth the click: it's only 17 seconds):

https://youtu.be/_36yNWw_07g

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#122

Post by bouncycastle »

DangitBobby wrote: post #114
bouncycastle wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't, and it's a very important technology since it's the only way for humans to store digital property without relying on some government or corporation. Also, it ever gets attacked, much more will be at stake, including your freedom for choosing what software can be run on your computer.

Cryptocurrencies, not cryptography. My software freedom is not dependent on the existence of cryptocurrencies. My hardware freedom is currently significantly hampered by them.

freedom for me, but not anyone else. Genius.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#123

Post by bcook »

ranger_danger wrote: post #89
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do actually, in fact it was already leaked like a week ago. (the integ gpu drv RAR file has it + CUDA and more goodies)

Integrated NVIDIA GPU? What do you mean?

A quick Googling shows that "integdev_gpu_drv.rar" is the filename the hackers released.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#124

Post by DangitBobby »

schappim wrote: post #67
DangitBobby wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.

Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.

Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#125

Post by modeless »

akvadrako wrote: post #119
modeless wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will easily double in the next year with the release of the $399 Steam Deck and accompanying Proton and Steam improvements. Linux is finally about to become a serious gaming platform. (No thanks to Nvidia)

Steam deck uses AMD GPUs though, so this wouldn't help.

But the improvements Valve is making to Steam, Proton, and other areas along with game developers paying more attention to Linux compatibility will benefit all Linux users, not just Steam Deck users, and make Linux a more popular gaming platform even among people with Nvidia PCs.

Yesterday I installed Steam on my Linux machine and downloaded a random game that has no Linux port and played it. It worked perfectly, just like Windows. It was amazing.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#126

Post by DangitBobby »

bouncycastle wrote: post #122
DangitBobby wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies, not cryptography. My software freedom is not dependent on the existence of cryptocurrencies. My hardware freedom is currently significantly hampered by them.

freedom for me, but not anyone else. Genius.

That reply probably sounded pretty smart in your head. Maybe you think I'm suggesting that we should outlaw or criminalize them? That makes sense based on your previous comment. But I said no such thing. Wishing it ill is not the same as taking away your freedom.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#127

Post by uncomputation »

ckastner wrote: post #94
httpz wrote: post #9

>"We decided to help mining and gaming community," I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Wouldn't this drive up the crypto-motivated demand for GPUs even more and hurt the gaming community?

> I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Agreed. But I don't understand how this helps the mining community, either. Removing the LHR restriction would lead to a vast increase of the network hash rate, and consequently the difficulty would also increase, leading to lower rewards. The result would be that (1) non-LHR card owner's rewards go down significantly, and (2) LHR card owner's rewards p…

Yep, it’s the red queen’s race problem. If LHR is lifted, your hash rate will rise, but so will everyone else’s, so you are either (1) no better off or (2) worse off because other people may use this increased efficiency per chip to buy more chips, thus increasing their hash power proportionally. No one will ever decrease their hash power.

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#128

Post by 3836293648 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #64
httpz wrote: post #9

>"We decided to help mining and gaming community," I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Wouldn't this drive up the crypto-motivated demand for GPUs even more and hurt the gaming community?

> I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. It doesn't. This is just miners co-opting an old argument to gain sympathy.

Eh, it absolutely helps the Linux gaming community. Not so much the Windows one though

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#129

Post by akvadrako »

modeless wrote: post #125
akvadrako wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam deck uses AMD GPUs though, so this wouldn't help.

But the improvements Valve is making to Steam, Proton, and other areas along with game developers paying more attention to Linux compatibility will benefit all Linux users, not just Steam Deck users, and make Linux a more popular gaming platform even among people with Nvidia PCs. Yesterday I installed Steam on my Linux machine and downloaded a random game that has no Linux port and played it. It worked perfectly, jus…

How is that relevant to Nvidia GPU source code?

Re: Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever

#130

Post by randomhodler84 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #114
bouncycastle wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't, and it's a very important technology since it's the only way for humans to store digital property without relying on some government or corporation. Also, it ever gets attacked, much more will be at stake, including your freedom for choosing what software can be run on your computer.

Cryptocurrencies, not cryptography. My software freedom is not dependent on the existence of cryptocurrencies. My hardware freedom is currently significantly hampered by them.

And that is where the contradiction exists — let’s say you get your way, and governments start arresting people doing arbitrary computation on their graphics card — let’s say hashing. That would very bad for everyone’s freedoms, software and hardware. The same anticryptocurrency playbook is what was used against cryptography in the 90s. Technology that challenges the powerful is dangerous!

It’s ok to not like cryptocurrency and not use it. Others can, and will. Be on the side that empowers people with technology, not the side that wants to take it away.

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