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

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:05 AM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #435

tyjen wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment chain made me envision a potentially terrible future direction. Imagine a future where websites force people to consent to allowing them use your device to mine cryptocurrency while you use its services or browse its content instead of ads.

"Imagine a future where websites force people to consent " I imagine a future, where people just do not vist sites, where they do not agree to the conditions. But like others pointed out, those sites exist already since quite a while.

Post by kingcharles » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 6:17 AM UTC

avianes wrote: post #355

mjg59 wrote: post #208

There are two scenarios where carrying out their threat plausibly helps the open source community: 1) A source drop demonstrates that Nvidia incorporated GPLed code into their drivers. This is, honestly, unlikely - Nvidia has sufficiently competent lawyers to ensure that everyone they employ is extremely aware of what the consequences of that would be 2) The source drop includes the private keys used to sign Nvidia G…

If NVIDIA's firmware's signature private keys are in a standard file instead of being in a HSM (Hardware Security Module), as all serious companies do, then NVIDIA can only blame themselves. I seriously doubt that firmware's signature private keys are in hacker's hands.

Post by octoberfranklin » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 7:28 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #534

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…

> I don't think they've thought through their demands very well. If you, as a person with technical skills, aren't making money hand over fist with a normal job in the tech sector and instead are doing illegal things like this, it's very likely that there is something wrong with your judgment in general.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

salawat wrote: post #420

josefx wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that Linux, on a default configuration (which means, ISO with Nouveau) To this day I cannot think of a good reason to ship nouveau outside of "lets make users with nvidia cards suffer". I get the idea behind the nouveau project, but pushing an experimental driver that cannot work with 99% of the hardware it latches onto and forces users to disable it if they want a basic working system is actively malicious.

No, it isn't, and the malice comes entirely from circumstances foisted on the Free/Libre Open Source community by Nvidia's inherent user hostility at the behest of corporate America/the music/content delivery industry. It isn't that hard to write a manual. It isn't that hard to respect user freedom to use tge device they purchased. It isn't that hard to just leave well enough alone. But no.... Nvidia just couldn't.

Post by yashasolutions » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 11:29 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #479

pavlov wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd argue it's the opposite. Crypto is fairly easy to avoid as an individual - the only thing I can think of that crypto has "contaminated" is GPU prices. Otherwise, don't get involved and just watch and laugh at the dumpster fire from a safe distance. You don't have to get involved in crypto to participate in society. Advertising on the other hand is very hard to avoid, and even blocking the ads themselves doesn't i…