Cybercriminals who breached Nvidia issue one of the most unusual demands ever • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by crest » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:41 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #73

modeless wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh, tell me about it. +Installs Linux, this time determined to make it daily driver. Why is this so slow though? - You need to install Nvidia drivers + Oh, OK makes sense. -- INSTALLS NVIDIA DRIVERS -- -- LINUX NO LONGER BOOTS, OBSCURE ERROR MESSAGE, FURIOUSLY GOOGLING ON A TINY PHONE SCREEN TRYING TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE -- Later made myself a Hackintosh, eventually bought an actual Mac. The Hackintosh stuff was much,…

While I hate unreliable drivers as much as the next guy this is not just an Nvidia problem. Several Linux kernel developers love to break API just to mess with closed source GPU driver e.g. replace an API for no reason other than hiding a few indispensable functions behind a GPL only macro. This causes nothing but avoidable grieve to users and the driver maintainers.

It’s really interesting to see the difference between Linux and FreeBSD (which doesn’t break kernel APIs for shit and giggles). The damn Nvidia kernel module is still a bloated closed source blob, but not once in >10 years did it break. The largest problems I had with this driver under FreeBSD was after the adoption of KMS because Linux locked away the new memory management API required for efficient tearing free frame swapping behind GPL only macros resulting in massive tearing (there were workarounds like using a vsync enabled compositor adding latency and wasting enough power to cost me 30-60 min battery runtime).

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

#332

Post by ksec » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:41 PM UTC

Hypothetically speaking, they could release everything and it still wouldn't damage Nvidia much other than PR and marketing.

The drivers code cant be used in open source, as it will be IP theft. Their competitors could see how they are doing things, but it isn't copy and paste, those techniques would still requires years of understanding and implementation on their own hardware. Assuming they are applicable. Even if you have the blueprint of their GPU, you cant bring it to TSMC, Samsung or Intel to build it. Their competitors could see it but again the magic isn't really in the GPU itself. And again just like software, even if AMD and Intel did spot a few moves to copy it will be 3-4 years before it appears on market.

I dont know if those code include CUDA, which to me seems to be the most important bit for Nvidia.

I also think there are lots of upside for Nvidia to be playing as the victim and just their strategy. From IP licensing to drivers. It will be interesting to see how this play out.

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

#333

Post by dan-0 » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

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…

This was the single biggest "driver" to me moving to Mac from Linux. I had a really nice system that I built and used for work. I was working on a project with a 24 hour requirement, it was only an hour of work. I needed to update for a particular dependency, but decided to update everything and low and behold, my video output broke after the update. I made the deadline, but spent literally all day and night trying to get everything working and done. The next day after a long nap, I shelved what should have been a perfectly good piece of hardware and bought a Mac after using Linux for well over a decade.

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

#334

Post by teekert » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:47 PM UTC

LoveMortuus wrote: post #305

saurik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds directly addressing NVIDIA (worth the click: it's only 17 seconds): https://youtu.be/_36yNWw_07g

Is it the video that I think it is? Yeah it is~ ^^

Nvidia license taints kernel.

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

#335

Post by SkeuomorphicBee » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:52 PM UTC

A bit off-topic, but the fact that criminals asked for help mining, instead of money or crypto-money, just gave me an epiphany:

The whole internet is showing the first signs of a digital Resource Curse [1] brought by crypto mining. Crypto mining changed the economics of the digital world in such a drastic way that it is poisoning all kinds of internet interactions. It is not just about disrupting how money used to work, it is disrupting every kind of interaction, even those that had nothing to do with money. Things that were completely economically neutral before, so people did them just for fun, can now be exploited to extract value, so naturally some people do it and the previous innocent/neutral status quo is lost. For example: most free unix shell providers, a fun tradition from nerds from the 90s, had to shut down because now there is such a big economic incentive to abuse such free service.

And while writing above I realized that crypto is probably the second internet curse, with Google's algorithm being the first. When Google became the near-monopoly in the early 2000s, linking to a website ceased to be an economic neutral activity, people realized they could extract value from linking, so link spam became a big problem and forever changed the web.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

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

#336

Post by b0afc375b5 » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:53 PM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #288

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…

Reminds me of a story where someone joined a company, then immediately fixed a bug in the code that had been bothering them for years, sighed, and put in their two weeks' notice.

I'm assuming you meant this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26663798

Comment says it's a joke, however.

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

#337

Post by CrazyPyroLinux » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #320

ihateolives wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No single piece of software has wasted more of my time than Nvidia's drivers I see you haven't used printers much :)

I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID. I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy . Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum. Edit: Lasers are fine. That will be left alone.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta...

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

#338

Post by gambiting » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #316

gambiting wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Isn't all crypto currency already outlaws No? Here in UK you can legally buy/sold/hold crypto. HMRC even tells you exactly how to pay taxes on it with official documents explaining the process.

Oh, I didn't know. I was trying to use the original definition of outlaw, where a person is excluded from protections of the law. Do crypto transactions enjoy the same level of regulatory protection (assuming UK has any) that normal cash transactions do? Like if I am defrauded in a rug pull, can I sue the rug puller?

Well since it's a civil matter sure, you can sue whoever defrauded you. But no, general protections enjoyed by other financial transactions don't apply generally.

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

#339

Post by weego » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #332

Hypothetically speaking, they could release everything and it still wouldn't damage Nvidia much other than PR and marketing. The drivers code cant be used in open source, as it will be IP theft. Their competitors could see how they are doing things, but it isn't copy and paste, those techniques would still requires years of understanding and implementation on their own hardware. Assuming they are applicable. Even if…

Having the source leaked can be leveraged as a hindrance to third parties.

While it's closed source any coincidentally similar code is just that, a coincidence.

When it's out in the open coincidence becomes a potential denial of progress attack. How would you prove without doubt that something with clean-room created? Sounds time consuming and costly.

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

#340

Post by deathcakes » Fri, Mar 04, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #63

modeless wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A better solution would be for AMD to invest in bringing their ML stacks up to date to work with PyTorch and such.

They actually have already - PyTorch works straight up with ROCm, and so does Tensorflow. There is a little faffing to do to get it to work but they've made great progress in the last six months.