Nvidia in a bada** move reportedly hacked the hacker group that stole its precious data and encrypted the data, making it useless to anyone who doesn’t have the right encryption key, according to a report by Vx-underground on its official Twitter handle.
Nvidia CEO: Jensen Huang/Reuters
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LAPSU$, an extortion group from South America, had illegally breached into Nvidia’s mailing server and squeezed malware on the software distribution server. This allowed the hacker group to purportedly get their hands on over 1 terabyte of Nvidia’s data. The nature of the data was unknown as Nvidia didn’t really reveal many details about the theft.
Nvidia however has identified the attackers (based on screenshots shared by Vx-underground) and has infected the perpetrator’s system with ransomware and encrypted the stolen data in response to the attack.
via Bleeping Computer
The cyber group however said, (based on a report by BleepingComputer) “Nvidia tried, but failed, we have all the data, ” indicating that they had backed up the data, which could make Nvidia’s current move futile.
The ransom
The hacker group is asking the GPU maker to remove the LHR limitations in the GeForce RTX 30 Series firmware (that will enable cryptocurrency mining on those cards) threatening to leak the folder’s confidential hardware data.
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Unsplash
Hackers claim that the data contains important source code and that they have enough information for a good developer to be able to create a bypass for Nvidia’s LHR that could enable crypto mining on those cards. The data also includes important files like schematics, driver, firmware etc.
Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement, “We are investigating an incident. Our business and commercial activities continue uninterrupted. We are still working to evaluate the nature and scope of the event and don’t have any additional information to share at this time.”
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