{"id":2218,"date":"2022-03-03T00:27:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpsites.ucalgary.ca\/isec-601-f21\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2022-03-03T00:27:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-03T07:27:45","slug":"the-conflict-between-nvidia-and-ransomware-group-lapsus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpsites.ucalgary.ca\/isec-601-f21\/2022\/03\/03\/the-conflict-between-nvidia-and-ransomware-group-lapsus\/","title":{"rendered":"The conflict between Nvidia and Ransomware Group Lapsus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What happened in NVIDIA?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

NVIDIA<\/em>, the inventor of the GPU, which creates interactive graphics on laptops, workstations, mobile devices, notebooks, and PCs, announced that they had suffered a cyber-attack on February 25, some important information has been stolen, and hackers are currently leaking the stolen data on the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people speculated that this attack may be caused by the recent conflict between Ukraine and Russia. However, there\u2019s no evidence to support this inference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nvidia said in a statement that according to the company’s current investigation, external hackers obtained employee account password information and entered the system. They stole some proprietary confidential information from the company’s system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nvidia first discovered the hack on February 23, quickly strengthened the cyber security then contacted cyber security experts and notified the police. Nvidia’s team analyzed the stolen information, preliminary estimates showed that the hack will not disrupt the company’s business or ability to serve customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who launch the attack\uff1f<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Early Saturday morning, Dark Web intelligence company DarkTracer announced that Lapsus$, the ransomware gang, claimed responsibility for this cyber-attack, leaked what it says was a password hash to Nvidia employees, and noted that it contained other data including source code and information related to RTX GPUs. The size of stolen data is around 1TB. Lapsus$ threatened to release the data if its demands, namely an unspecified sum of money, aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A person familiar with the matter reported that the hack was part of a so-called “ransomware attack.” In this type of attack, a hacker may install encryption software on the attacked system so that the data cannot be read by the other party, and then the hacker will make a ransom demand to remove the encryption software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Nvidia said that no malware has been deployed on the internal network so far. Instead, the hackers stole vital data outright, and they offered conditions that required Nvidia to lift restrictions on some graphics card products that affected how efficiently they could use graphics cards to “mine” cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

what is the consequence\uff1f <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nvidia turned down the hackers’ extortion, and they started disclosing the stolen data. Because of Nvidia’s actions, Lapsus$ has announced that they are already shipping unlock codes that can bypass Nvidia’s official LHR(Lite Hash Rate) installed on the GA102 and GA104 chips. He also claimed that among the 1TB of data he stole, there were Nvidia’s product drawings, drivers, firmware data, proprietary tools, software developer tools, and more. There’s also “All About Falcon.” Falcon is a special microcontroller architecture found in all of Nvidia’s graphics cards, used in a wide range of functions from program security to memory replication to video decoding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Lapsus$ threat is successful, it means that all Nvidia 3000 series graphics cards can once again perform at 100% mining performance. However, in addition to benefiting miner owners who have installed NVIDIA graphics cards, it is not clear what impact this will have on the future cryptocurrency market and graphics card market. Considering that the upgrade of Ethereum’s proof-of-stake mechanism will be completed in the first half of 2022, any investor who buys NVIDIA graphics cards for mining hardware will not have much time to earn its cost. Taking into account the virtual prosperity and plummeting volatility of the cryptocurrency market in the past two years, any miners with long-term plans may not spend a lot of money because of the short promises of hacker organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

According to Nvidia’s official reply email, it is impossible to confirm which Nvidia technology was stolen. When the media contacted Nvidia’s internal staff privately, the responses they got were surprisingly consistent with the official statement: the damage was limited and controllable. However, judging from the drama, back-and-forth, and twists and turns of the matter, the impact of the stolen data on Nvidia should not be underestimated. There is no doubt that the cyber attack on Nvidia has taught all companies a lesson. In order to ensure business interests and technological advantages, it is necessary to pay attention to cyber security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference<\/h4>\n\n\n\n