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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

#421

Post by mixedCase »

qayxc wrote: post #213
peferron wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird. I've been using an Ubuntu desktop with a GTX 1080 daily for years now, across multiple major OS versions and driver versions, with zero GPU-related issues.

Desktop is OK for the most part, hybrid graphics on Laptop can still be a living nightmare, though. Every other driver update breaks the system in unexpected ways, Wayland wasn't supported for the longest time, switching GPUs had no support at all for quite a while and still is a bad joke compared to Windows (e.g. you have to log out and log in again to switch the graphics processor unless you use 3rd party tools).

> Every other driver update breaks the system in unexpected ways

That's almost surely your distro's fault. I used to ran Nvidia for well over a decade on Arch with zero issues, and it's far from the only distro that properly handles Nvidia drivers.

If your distro doesn't distribute an Nvidia driver on their repos and maintains it accordingly with the kernel it ships, it is not an option you can consider if you are using Nvidia.

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

#422

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

vetinari wrote: post #388
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've heard AMD's drivers are OK these days but haven't tried them myself because I care about ML. They are OK but with some caveats like VP9 HW decode not being available in Linux AMD iGPU drivers for reasons, which won't be a problem if you're running an AMD desktop tower PC, but if you're gonna watch Youtube on your AMD laptop, your battery will take a hit along with possible extra fan noise, which is unacceptable…

Isn't this some distro-specific problem? VP9 should be available since Mesa 18.1 (or so) for VCN-based GPUs (i.e. Raven Ridge and newer). VP9 is not supported in hardware on UVD-based GPUs (i.e. discrete Vega). VCN 3.0-based GPUs (i.e. RDNA2, the 6000-series APUs) also support AV1 decoding.

>VP9 should be available since Mesa 18.1 (or so) for VCN-based GPUs (i.e. Raven Ridge and newer).

Yeah, in theory it's available, but good luck actually getting your browser to use it to HW decode YouTube videos under linux out of the box.

It usually works fine with video players like mplayer but not in browsers.

There are endless threads online about this not working. I for one, never managed to get it to work in any browser. What a mess.

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

#423

Post by krsrhe »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #419

I doubt nvidia would have complied with their demands anyway, but the new demand "make all your code open source or else we'll release it ourselves" gives them absolutely no incentive to comply at all. If the choices are you can have your source out there but unlicensed so it's illegal for anyone else to use it, or you can choose to legally let anyone else use your source -- why would nvidia ever choose the latter? T…

They want the driver code public but not the hardware code.

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

#425

Post by Qub3d »

franga2000 wrote: post #181
azinman2 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except no one professional would touch the leaked source with a 10 ft poll. Expect continued clean room reverse engineering or get sued.

Of course, a cleanroom procedure is a given in this case. History has shown that it is entirely possible though - see ReactOS for one very public example. But also, not everyone cares. See game modders who routinely use source code leaks to make game patches. I'm not talking about big companies that want nvidia would want to sue, but individuals and small groups, who are not a big enough target and would likely remai…

ReactOS isn't necessarily the best example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20341933

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

#426

Post by hirako2000 »

seanw444 wrote: post #414
seizethegdgap wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read their second paragraph. Unless you were going for some kind of meta-joke/correction, in which case bravo.

It was definitely a serious-toned joke. Bravo from me as well. I don't know how people navigate the web without an ad blocker anymore. Do people actually do that? it's unbearable. Slows pages down, clutters the actual content, wastes more battery on phones and laptops, generally rewards companies for spying on you... it's awful. Can we go back to when people weren't so lazy as to do everything in their power to not h…

interesting point of comparison. the much bigger cost of ads is probably the attention loss. we don't have much attention capacity. ads increasingly syphon it. I guestimate that attention loss for an average person is worth order of magnitude more than the extra cpu tearing + bandwidth costs required to run ads. but like for your comparison, most users aren't even realising they are paying a significant mental cost by accepting those ads.

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

#427

Post by aasasd »

By the way, ‘lapsus’ as a slang-ish Russian word was around perhaps until 1970s or 1980s. Quite rare today. Means ‘a dumb mistake’.

It comes from Latin, and Wiktionary says that it's used in English and Romance-family languages, but I've never seen it outside of Russian. It might be used in other Slavic languages, though.

If the word is not around in Western languages, then presumably it would point to Russian origins, or someone really did their homework to misattribute blame.

(Or I might've missed the news where those guys are already uncovered—so far I only saw it being mentioned that the attack is from South America.)

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

#428

Post by Zpalmtree »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #309
keymon-o wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah there. I don’t like the crypto culture and mindset as the next guy, but there are plenty of other options to preventing use case you presented. If systems aren’t closed enough already… And as far as the gaming goes, I cannot see how playing games is more noble usage of gpu than crypto mining.

"I'm just gonna artificially raise price of this limited resource even though there already exists hardware specifically made for me, but after the next generation comes out I can re-sell this one to some sucker" If you don't see anything wrong with that then that's about it. I really hope US or China or someone is going to regulate cryptocurrencies to shit so cryto-bros can stop destroying the planet and normal peop…

You aren't entitled to cheaper video cards just because you don't like what other people are doing with them

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

#429

Post by matheusmoreira »

ggreg84 wrote: post #225
bouncycastle wrote: post #30

I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope.

> I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope. I'd assume that developing extra features costs money. If a buyer doesn't need a feature, why should they have to pay for it? For example, if a gamer does not need drivers for a CAD program, or crypto features…

Because the hardware already does all of those things whether you paid for them or not. I don't care what the company thinks, if I pay for hardware I want the ability to use it to its fullest extent and without any question about my intentions. That is what it means to have computing freedom: I shouldn't have to answer to some bullshit corporate concerns over what I'm doing with my property.

It's one thing to test your chip and turn off defective parts so that you can sell a downgraded but still viable version and increase yields. Selling the exact same chips to everyone with software that locks out features just to segment the market is unacceptable and frankly quite offensive. It's the sort of thing that makes everyone wish they get cracked on principle, just to make things sane again.

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

#430

Post by rekoil »

pavlov wrote: post #405
jason-phillips wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 econ…

Ads at least require an audience. Crypto mining abuse requires just the ability to execute anything. That’s why ads are like acne for the Internet, but crypto is a cancer.

> crypto is a cancer.

Proof of Work is a cancer. The two are heavily intertwined, but they are not technically mutual terms. Proof of Work needs to be stopped, irrelevant of what it is used for.

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