US chip maker Nvidia said an attacker leaked employee data and some company-owned information online after hacking its systems.
“We have no evidence that ransomware has been deployed in the Nvidia environment or that this is related to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
The California-based Santa Clara Corporation said it learned of the breach on February 23. Nvidia added that it is analyzing the leaked information and does not expect any disruption to the company’s business.
A ransomware group named Lapsus$ claimed to be responsible for the leak and the leak appears to contain information about schematics, drivers, firmware, among other data, about graphics chips.
Nvidia, which has a market capitalization of about $600 billion, is the most valuable chip maker in the United States. It is famous for its GPUs that enhance video game experiences and advanced computer simulation.
South American-based hacking group Lapsus$ threatens to disclose software and firmware data of the company’s LHR mining performance limiter.
The group appears to be confident of the stolen data. And it posted an ad selling data that allows bypassing the LHR applied to the GA102 and GA104 chips.
And if Lapsus does carry out its threat, this means that every Nvidia 3000 series card can be turned into a cryptocurrency mining tool.
Besides the direct effects of high profit rates of widespread mining systems. It is unclear how this move may affect the graphics card market.
NVIDIA Hackers Threaten About LHR Mining Performance Limiter
Given the possibility of Ethereum moving to a Proof of Stake concept in the first half of this year. Anyone who invests in additional cryptocurrency miners will have limited time to recover their investment and make a profit.
The group is asking the company to remove the LHR locator itself, in exchange for HW’s folder not leaking the stolen data.
The group claims to have stolen terabytes of sensitive information. Including product schematics, driver and firmware data, documentation, special tools, and SDKs. Plus all about Falcon.
Falcon is a special class of microcontrollers shipped inside all NVIDIA GPUs, and handles a variety of tasks from video decoding to memory copying to security.
The group claims that the company has not yet contacted it, and at the same time distributed part of the stolen data. Sources who have access to the aforementioned data said it matches the group’s allegations.
The company reportedly conducted a reverse hack against the group to recover its data, which the group confirmed. But it said it backed up the data before the hack attempt, rendering Nvidia’s efforts fruitless.
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