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Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

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Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#31

Post by ethbr0 »

doubtfuluser wrote: post #7

Putting on my Paranoia hat: what if some aggressor indeed was able to introduce code into the Nvidia drivers, which - if put on enough systems - would cripple the ability to (re-)train Ai systems which might be used in military defense systems. What if - even worse - people decided to use Nvidia hardware in the inference systems as well… Putting down the paranoia hat. Happy weekend.

> would cripple the ability to (re-)train Ai systems which might be used in military defense systems

Not sure you're familiar with defense update and release schedules. As long as this gets fixed sometime in the next 5+ years, everything will be fine.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#32

Post by pinephoneguy »

doubtfuluser wrote: post #7

Putting on my Paranoia hat: what if some aggressor indeed was able to introduce code into the Nvidia drivers, which - if put on enough systems - would cripple the ability to (re-)train Ai systems which might be used in military defense systems. What if - even worse - people decided to use Nvidia hardware in the inference systems as well… Putting down the paranoia hat. Happy weekend.

This has always been a problem. Third party closed source OS components are a massive security risk. Te people of the next century will look back on us as barbarians.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#34

Post by WallyFunk »

DRAGONERO wrote: post #2

The article lacks a lot of information unfortunately, but it makes it sound like the website (distribution channel) was the only part they are concerned about, which wouldn't be classed as major. What I'd class as major would be some third party gaining access to NVIDIA's RTL designs and source code for their drivers for current and unreleased GPUs, but this hack doesn't sound remotely close to that. Luckily.

> What I'd class as major would be some third party gaining access to NVIDIA's RTL designs and source code for their drivers

Ransomware operators are not that clever, they go for low hanging fruit. I mean, yeah, by all means, do recon on a system you just pwned and try to do a supply chain attack, but it's outside the range of these operators. They only have a hammer, and everything just looks like a nail.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#35

Post by thfuran »

ginko wrote: post #17
tonmoy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thief would be using the RTL to make a clone of NVIDIA graphics card, they’d be using the IP cores as modules in their own designs. With some minor adjustment it shouldn’t be too difficult to get at least most of the RTL working in a different mode (maybe lower clock speed)

>maybe lower clock speed That is an understatement. 65nm is ten times larger than what NVidia is currently using. That means the area would be 100 times larger and any signal distances 10 times larger. And keep in mind that NVidia GPU designs already take up quite a bit of area on modern nodes. So you'd likely have to cut it down to a 100th of modules which would run at 10th speed.

Is signal propagation actually close to being a limiting factor in clock speeds for most designs? I thought it's pretty much always thermals.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#36

Post by technonerd »

https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1497484483494354946

LAPSU$ extortion group, a group operating out of South America, claim to have breached NVIDIA and exfiltrated over 1TB of proprietary data.

LAPSU$ claims NVIDIA performed a hack back and states NVIDIA has successfully* ransomed their machines.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#38

Post by gorkish »

thfuran wrote: post #35
ginko wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>maybe lower clock speed That is an understatement. 65nm is ten times larger than what NVidia is currently using. That means the area would be 100 times larger and any signal distances 10 times larger. And keep in mind that NVidia GPU designs already take up quite a bit of area on modern nodes. So you'd likely have to cut it down to a 100th of modules which would run at 10th speed.

Is signal propagation actually close to being a limiting factor in clock speeds for most designs? I thought it's pretty much always thermals.

That is not the point; the signal propagation times in the VLSI blocks are engineered to work properly at the specific physical size. If the structures are scaled to a larger node size, the timing variances increase. If you want to do this, you can either 1) reengineer all the VLSI blocks to meet timing requirements at the larger node size (maybe impossible) or 2) slow the clock speed to loosen the requirements.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#39

Post by Melio »

nimrody wrote: post #29
Melio wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it realistic though? Hacking into Nvidias corp network, infiltrating their git server, disabling security scans and then injecting a backdoor undetected in complex code? In a process which is highly controlled due to it being a very central peace of software. Very unrealistic. It's easier to find or buy zero days in the wild for the same goal

Well.. that's exactly what happened to Solarwinds last year, didn't it? Actually smarter than that - they got into the build system and added the malicious code in the build process so you couldn't see it in the repository. Do you think it's that difficult for a state sponsored body to infiltrate into a commercial company?

The effort my big software company does on regards of requirements of releasing software, I would say yes.

Big companies like Nvidia have background checks, independent security teams etc.

Impossible? No. But easier and cheaper is still other means.

Re: Nvidia Hit by Major Cyberattack

#40

Post by annadane »

annadane wrote: post #6
alangibson wrote: post #3

My guess is it's Linux user group trying to finally liberate the source code for their graphics card drivers. /humor

"We'll send them AMD" "Ammunition of Mass Destruction?" "No..."

Thanks for the downvotes, appreciate it. I thought it was funny but apparently people have a stick up their ass
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