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

720 points by jbredeche 5y ago

Fnoord 5y ago
Unusual demand or plausible deniability?
nikanj 5y ago
This is pretty high on my Cyberpunkometer
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
squarefoot 5y ago
I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.
- gjs278 5y ago
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  - btmiller 5y ago
    That’s a pretty hyperbolic response. There’s always a risk that mismanaged use of energy results in us never reaching Kardashev Type 1 (i.e. we destroy the habitability of the planet before we get there).
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      That is true. However I am responding to another sheer Luddite attitude on a tech forum. Hating a new technology for the sake of it is not progress.
      - ofrzeta 5y ago
        So is liking/hyping a new technology for the sake of it (or for the sake of getting rich).
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Sure, but that doesn’t apply here. I am a technical individual who can make a case for the technology, and have for many years. All you precoiners do is complain that everyone else is getting rich and/or destroying the planet. It Just isn’t so!
        newswasboring 5y ago
        What case do you want to make about technology though? That it is cool is I think pretty much accepted by everyone. The objection there being just because something is cool doesn't mean we do it especially if its at the detriment to the planet we live on. That it is useful? If you have time, please make that case. To avoid having a flamewar over it, lets try to be concrete and cite an actual project (even if in progress)
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        smokey_circles 5y ago
        Sure, but one side can be substantiated. The Satoshi protocol is not about money. It is a distributed, trust-less consensus algorithm. Finance was just a good candidate to start with. But we can expand that much further. Some strange examples I hear about how this is silly: "You can't have a smart contract act as an employer because it doesn't exist" But neither do companies? They're an abstraction that we agree exists, enforced by law. It needs to be enforced by law because of the issue of trust. But if I have a mechanism that removes trust (merkle trees) then what's the issue? The contract will do what it states it does because that's the only option it has. Granted, it's a touch utopian and I'm not advocating for setting this system up tomorrow. But it's absolutely an achievable goal
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >>Bitcoin has been around 13 years at this point and you still don’t get why folks need to use energy to secure their money. In those 13 years it has proven to be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme for cryptobros and probably one of the most wasteful endeavours that humanity has ever started. One can only hope that the next 13 years kill it for good, either by imploding internally, or it being outlawed in every country that can.
    - smokey_circles 5y ago
      > Ponzi scheme Doesn't meet the requirement: New investor money to pay old investors. Which is not to say it's problem free, but that problem is at the exchange level. Art suffers the same flaws. And Yachts. And on and on and on. That's why we have regulations. Desperately need regulation at the fiat/crypto exchange
      - lodovic 5y ago
        Yes it does - Bitcoin is mainly used for speculation. Paying for groceries with Bitcoin is too expensive (transaction fees) and you typically cannot use your Bitcoin savings as a collateral for another investment due to the price volatility. This means that if you want to cash out, you need someone else to invest their "new investor money" in Bitcoin.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Nah, a lot of things are that without being a ponzi, like Amazon stock. It pays nothing. Does nothing. Requires you to find someone who will pay more than you paid and sell it to them to make money. It’s not.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      > it being outlawed in every country that can. Being pedantic for fun. Isn't all crypto currency already outlaws? They operate outside of all the financial laws and regulations we have. In fact I think some proponents are citing this as a feature.
  - squarefoot 5y ago
    > There is no better metric of human progress than energy usage. True, but when energy is used to manufacture products or services. When you turn energy into money there's no progress involved and no new jobs are created. The only linked activities which would benefit would be energy creation and the manufacture of mining hardware. Everything else will suffer when more and more money will be diverted to buy more energy (whose prices will of course be dictated by the highest bidder) and more mining farms. Of course I expect people with vested interests in cryptocurrencies to not care at all.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Countries are get kicked out of the global banking system, and WESTERN countries start confiscating bank accounts. Inflation at levels not seen in 30 years. And that’s just last month. Bitcoin is a product. It autonomously provides a Service. Sound money. Hard money. Censorship resistance and decentralized peer to peer money. It’s ok if you still are skeptical, but don’t wait too long!
      - leereeves 5y ago
        Are you suggesting that it would be a good thing if Russia used cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions?
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        I am suggesting a monetary system that is beyond the influence of the state is a good thing.
        leereeves 5y ago
        Good for criminals and rogue states, certainly.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Sure, but also the dissident, someone fleeing a war zone, someone having their life savings destroyed by bankers and politicians… It’s ok if you don’t have a use for decentralized money. I hope you never need it, and continue a sheltered life of luxury and convenience.
  - bigbluedots 5y ago
    Yeah, let's piss away a bunch of energy for no good reason and then say we're a more advanced society because of it!
    - smokey_circles 5y ago
      You are mostly describing the mineral mining sector though :D "Shiny metal, ug ug, me dig up". Which is not to say gold has no practical use but let's not pretend that's the only reason why we're mining it
- schappim 5y ago
  Would seem to be a rather misinformed comment even to a crypto-layperson. I’m surprised we don’t have a chorus of cyptofiles informing you that crypto emits less greenhouse gases than the traditional banking system, and there are coins/tokens that don’t require melting chips to establish proof of work. I can’t talk to the use of crypto currencies for crime, but I would be surprised if the total volume of transactions were greater than that of traditional currencies (ie cash).
  - larsrc 5y ago
    A couple of million transactions per day: https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-bitcoin-transactions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b... That's less than the number of private transactions in a moderately sized city, never mind business or financial transactions. Random comparison: NASDAQ alone sees 30-40 million transactions per day. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummary http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummar...
    - schappim 5y ago
      It’d be real interesting to do an analysis of the last mile power usage of the credit card networks / banking system. I wonder if the giant volume and ubiquity of credit card terminals tips the scales.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    ...but I would be surprised if the total volume of transactions were greater than that of traditional currencies (ie cash). You cannot compare the two. If you are poor and someone gives you crypto, you still won't have better food or a better apartment until you turn the crypto into cash. It isn't surprising that a less useful, simple form of transaction notation (which is really what money is and always has been) has less transactions than the sort of currency that can almost always buy you food, let you watch a movie, and pay your rent.
    - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
- baby 5y ago
  Cryptocurrencies are pretty green besides bitcoin and ethereum
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Also worthless, because they just keep printing them and giving them away to VCs, who then sucker engineers into building em a product/ecosystem. You will see it eventually David!
    - cbozeman 5y ago
      > Also worthless, because they just keep printing them and giving them away to VCs You literally just described what's happened with fiat currencies in the past decade. Endless printing of money and giving it away to big banks. I guess you'll see it eventually randomhodler84.
      - EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Except fiat currencies have a value in the market based on the economies of the countries that issue them. I have yet to see a cryptocurrency that has a value in the market based on anything other than "a bigger fool might come along".
        mattwilsonn888 5y ago
        I guess you don't understand what value the seal of approval a dollar has - for that is what Bitcoin generates but without the backdoor devaluation and cronyism of private banking.
        EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Sorry, that sentence doesn't make much sense as it is, could you please expand on it?
        5y ago
- smokey_circles 5y ago
  I'd like to engage with this opinion because I genuinely have no idea how this is the conclusion people reach (that crypto is bad for the environment). The configuration of transistors through which electrons are punched is obviously not the problem (at least I hope it's obvious). So it must be about proof of work chains, right? That they create high demand? That's about the only point I do understand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to meaningfully translate a bitcoin transaction to a carbon cost. There are some mining farms powered by green energy (less altruistic and more about being off grid). But if we're talking about energy usage and environmental damage, we have to talk mining. There is just no debate that mining is THE singular (keyword) greatest threat to the environment. Fracking, acid mine drainage, offshore drilling, sonic bombardments of coastlines, the ridonculous requirements of smelting. The list goes on and on. We are stuck with that industry for a long time though. I'd argue the minerals that constitute the technology you're using to view this comment may have done more damage than bitcoin and co have. In a nutshell, here's my problem with this argument: To suggest that demand is responsible for the damage caused by supply is just a crazy warping of reality. That absolutely does not make sense. There are other, more pressing issues with crypto (like the lack of regulation around fiat exchanges and how they constantly get rugged) and those criticisms are valid, but they get lost in the noise of "how we generate energy is not as bad as how we use it". I just can't get on board with that point of view.
  - larsrc 5y ago
    Cryptocurrencies have shown that you can transform energy into money without any of that messy middle step of doing something useful.
    - eru 5y ago
      They prevent double spending attacks. That service is useful for some people. You can of course disagree. Just like you can disagree that building and fueling yachts for rich people is useful.
      - selfportrait 5y ago
- 0xedd 5y ago
  - urthor 5y ago
    > What will you do when the government decides to nullify years of your life spent working? The US Government has nuclear weapons. If the US Government decided one day to start actively screwing me over... I'm fucked. There's no two ways about it. Them zeroing my bank account is going to be the least of my concerns. The argument about "if you use crypto currency you'll be safe from an evil government" holds no sway. The government knows where I sleep. The only way to not get fucked by the US Government, is to make sure the US Government is run by good people. You cannot mitigate an evil government. An evil government has so many tools at its disposal, an individual can do nothing. Hence, I'm forced to trust the US Government. Because if the US Government is untrustworthy, we're all screwed.
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      Good news! Some of the megacorps nowadays have power almost equal to that of governments! /s
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I'm no fan of banks, but that doesn't mean I'm about to trust the same small group of people that brought us The DAO, MtGox, OpenSea and the endless churn of crypto scams. Your arguments are the same ones that argue for cash, and not more layers of unaccountable middle men or networks that are controlled by a minority of wealthy stakeholders. I even made the argument for cash using that same exact anecdote about Cyprus that you used about a week ago[1]. At any point the government could order exchanges to take a haircut on deposits and transactions. If that happened, 99% of people who hold cryptocurrency would not have the ability to liquidate it without taking a haircut. Even LocalBitcoins needs to follow KYC laws in the US, and will comply with laws of the country as long as they want to operate in the US. If people used any legal exchange in the US, their wallets are associated with their identifying information and there will be a record of transactions on the blockchain that point back to them should they try to escape the haircut. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436347.
- ezoe 5y ago
  Be careful what you wish for. While I agree the current cryptocurrency is a mess, but prohibiting a pure computation cause more harms than good.
  - GreenWatermelon 5y ago
    The computations are ok, but exchange with, well, non-crypto currency could be prohibited. Crypto would lose its worth of you can't convert it to dollars in a feasible way. Much of the market is driven by speculative investment and get-rich-quick type of schemes. Of course, criminal organizations could still use it, but I believe it would be harder to launder money using crypto if banks no longer supported it.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      I think a ban on buying and selling crypto might just be good for the cryptocoin ecosystem. The whole idea of cryptocurrency idealists is that it replaces cash transactions, so if there is any value in the system besides pure speculation, the crypto coins should still work as advertised. Services can still accept the coin and goods can be sold for the coin, but you can't launder money through crypto networks anymore. It's crazy how banks are willing to scrutinise anything related to sex work to an extreme extent yet seem perfectly willing to support the latest weekly pump and dump by letting people exchange money for cryptocurrency at random exchanges.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    That ship has sailed. FP64 is artificially limited on AMD 290X graphics cards, as is workstation performance in enterprise software, and neither of those ideas was new at the time. That ship sailed decades ago, in fact. And in none of these cases, by the way, is computation prohibited. LHR cards are still capable of mining. A 290X can still run Solidworks. The choice of "prohibited" here is deliberately inflammatory - a word like "slowed" or "reduced" is more appropriate. (But it is true there are cases like ECC on AMD APUs where it actually is fully prohibited.)
- i67vw3 5y ago
  Could you tell your daily routine? I would like to calculate your carbon footprint and compare with mine to see whose is higher. By it, we can figure if you or me (an average cryptocurrency user) is harming the planet more.
chmod775 5y ago
> So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either: Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret OR Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too! Interesting. Someone got really fed up with them. I don't think their binary blob ever made them any friends.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I definitely support making GPUs less attractive to miners. I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining if it meant I could spend MSRP on a modern card.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    Is there some practical way to delineate the two product usages that isn't arbitrary I wonder? Maybe make mining only cards more performant and affordable than consumer graphics cards, so that consumer cards will drop in price from less demand? I find it hard to believe that a use case specific device wouldn't be able to dethrone graphics cards as the better choice for miners at the right price, and it should be cheaper right? No need for all that extra graphics related componentry like visual ports etc. I know stuff like that is already on the market, but it's usually more expensive as they are from more niche manufacturing. NVidia has the scale to make a similar device more affordable I imagine.
    - randomsilence 5y ago
      You would have to saturate the market with specific mining devices. Like with bitcoin ASIC miners, the crypto mining demands have to increase to the point where using gaming graphic cards becomes unprofitable. Otherwise miners will buy the specific mining devices and the gaming devices. The problem is that Etherum was designed to resist ASIC approaches. Instead of locking cards down, Nvidia could manage the supply. They could sell their cards in cooperation with Steam: Only people with an active steam account are eligible to a new card. If their performance stats don't improve after the purchase, which means they have resold their hardware, they won't be allowed to buy another card.
nikau 5y ago
Pity they don't have the driver source code to make their own uncrippled firmware...
- EMIRELADERO 5y ago
  They do actually, in fact it was already leaked like a week ago. (the integ gpu drv RAR file has it + CUDA and more goodies)
  - ranger_danger 5y ago
    Integrated NVIDIA GPU? What do you mean?
    - bcook 5y ago
      A quick Googling shows that "integdev_gpu_drv.rar" is the filename the hackers released.
      - tt365 5y ago
        hi
      - tt365 5y ago
        integdev_gpu_drv.rar
nojs 5y ago
> Nvidia introduced LHR in February 2021 with the launch of its GeForce RTX 3060 models. Three months later, the company brought LHR to its GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards. The reason: to make the cards less desirable to people mining Ethereum and possibly other types of cryptocurrencies. What a bizarre move. Why would they do this?
- gruez 5y ago
  1. Positive PR from "helping gamers" 2. Product segmentation (nvidia also make mining cards)
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    3. To actually help gamers and other legitimate users of GPUs
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      I’m sorry you are being outbid by another guy who wants to mine with a graphics card, but who are you to say that guy securing a censorship resistant and decentralized monetary system is less legit than your leisure time amateur rocket league tournament? If the owner uses it to train a ML model? Is that legit then? Or can general purpose GPUs only be single purpose for games. For gamers?
      - etataetaet 5y ago
        Or what about that guy finalizing their crypto rug pull? There are just too many bad actors in the crypto community. Most of it seems to be scams and over hyped coins that are completely useless.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Don’t disagree with you. But none of that has anything to do with folks doing PoW to secure a ledger. Infrastructure providers can’t really be blamed for the bandits. Nobody likes thieves, and Bitcoin specifically limits the power of the biggest ones.
httpz 5y ago
>"We decided to help mining and gaming community," I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Wouldn't this drive up the crypto-motivated demand for GPUs even more and hurt the gaming community?
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  I think the argument is that driver source being open could help the (tiny!) Linux gaming community, but I agree. This is about mining.
  - 0xedd 5y ago
    Percentage wise it looks small but numbers are impressive. Monthly active steam users using Linux was reported at over 1 million last year https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
    - modeless 5y ago
      That will easily double in the next year with the release of the $399 Steam Deck and accompanying Proton and Steam improvements. Linux is finally about to become a serious gaming platform. (No thanks to Nvidia)
      - akvadrako 5y ago
        Steam deck uses AMD GPUs though, so this wouldn't help.
        modeless 5y ago
        But the improvements Valve is making to Steam, Proton, and other areas along with game developers paying more attention to Linux compatibility will benefit all Linux users, not just Steam Deck users, and make Linux a more popular gaming platform even among people with Nvidia PCs. Yesterday I installed Steam on my Linux machine and downloaded a random game that has no Linux port and played it. It worked perfectly, just like Windows. It was amazing.
nharada 5y ago
> We decided to help mining and gaming community How does removing LHR help the gaming community?
- gambiting 5y ago
  It doesn't, it's just a PR statement to get more people on board.
- Zenbit_UX 5y ago
  Read the article? Nvidia released it to make GPUs less desirable to crypto miners so gamers can actually get their hands on some.
  - ranguna 5y ago
    Read the OP's question ? If "nvidia released it [LHR] to make GPUs less desirable to crypto miners", then, "How does removing LHR help the _gaming_ community?"
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Allows owners to make back some of the money spent on the hardware via mining, a la NiceHash and friends.
charcircuit 5y ago
I imagine Nvidia doesn't own the rights to the complete source code of the driver. Even if they wanted to open source it things move slow in big companies.
- modeless 5y ago
  AMD and Intel did it. The excuses ring hollow.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    At least from my understanding AMD did so by making a new open source driver while the old one remained closed.
    - modeless 5y ago
      That's a fine way to do it and Nvidia should have started 10 years ago.
    - 0xedd 5y ago
      Irrelevant. It would be relevant if others could write an open source driver. Which, effectively, they can't.
- rav 5y ago
  I would imagine that ownership of Nvidia's drivers would be more clear cut than most open source projects. Wouldn't it only be Nvidia's employees and contractors that have worked on the driver code? Then by default Nvidia would own the rights. If Nvidia doesn't own the code, do you then imagine they're in a sort of licensing agreement with the rightsholders that allows them to distribute the binary blobs but not the code? I don't understand what situation would lead a corporate-sponsored closed source project such as Nvidia's drivers to be in a position of complicated ownership.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    It could be as simple as using a third party library or snippet of code which they don't have the license to give out the source code for.
fjfbsufhdvfy 5y ago
So when do we ban cryptocurrencies already? The only use of this crap is crime.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Never, actually. Also you are wrong that the only use is crime. There are literally millions of stories in the last 13 years of cryptocurrency that demonstrate this. But of course keep screaming at the sun if you wish.
  - imilk 5y ago
    Millions? I'd struggle to name 3.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      I couldn’t name 3 baseball players, but that doesn’t mean none exist. It just means I’m ignorant of baseball.
      - ofrzeta 5y ago
        Still "millions of stories" is quite the exaggeration. Or do you count "someone bought and sold crypto coins" as a story?
    - rzzzt 5y ago
      I'll start: the 10k pizza
  - dathinab 5y ago
    Well, many of the especially relevant stories where still illegal. Sure ethically they where "right" and not illegal from a EU POV, but still illegal in the country they happened. Besides that most other stories are people getting rich by high-risk speculative investments. But the problem with mass investments into high-risk speculative investments is that they tend to create bubbles which can destabilize the economy, so not really that grate either. There are a lot of good use-cases for the technology behind crypto currencies. But much of the current crypto currency landscape is not grate a lot bubbles, a lot pyramid schemes and scams, a lot of things which conflict with money laundering regulations. And many other problems. I'm fully sure that the related technology (blockchain etc.) will have a future, I'm not sure about crypto currencies like we have them now.
bobsmooth 5y ago
Imagine if they actually leaked the driver source and verilog files though...
- randomsilence 5y ago
  It's the 'secret Coca Cola recipe' leaked to Pepsi situation: The source code is still protected by copy rights and patents. AMD cannot just take it.
  - travbrack 5y ago
    There are countries that don't care about US IP laws. China comes to mind.
    - 2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
      And, with the current crisis in mind, Russia. They'll be looking to expanding their local semiconductor production from now on.
      - leereeves 5y ago
        Having chip designs without a state of the art fab won't help them any more than having software without a computer would. For China and Russia to replace TSMC they'd need TSMC's (and ASML's) secrets, as well as nVidia's.
        fire 5y ago
        That's if we're assuming they want to directly reproduce existing hardware - I imagine they'd actually leverage it as something their engineers can learn from for future advancement
      - mapcars 5y ago
        I can tell you Russia is so far behind in technology they won't be able to do anything with this knowledge.
bouncycastle 5y ago
I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.
  - schappim 5y ago
    Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.
    - DangitBobby 5y ago
      Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though. Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.
      - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though. Exactly this. I'm guessing if they needed food they'd be out of luck.
        schappim 5y ago
        You’re probably not wrong.
      - schappim 5y ago
        > I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry. > boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists It is probably overstated. Orders of magnitude more criminal activity would be going through cash and even orgs that are meant to KYC, such as Western Union or even iTunes gift certificates. How many grannies are sending crypto vs providing logins to their bank accounts? I’m not a crypto-apologist, I just haven’t heard any solid arguments against it that can’t also be said about cash or the traditional banking system.
dathinab 5y ago
They say they want to help miners, but... Congratulations: They just gave lawmakers another arguments to move against crypto currencies, especially PoS based ones.
- baby 5y ago
  You mean PoW right?
  - dathinab 5y ago
    yes
- 0xedd 5y ago
  The US is a small part of the world. Just a reminder. You can open a bank account in the EU that allows depositing cryptocurrency. The US is on the decline. It's propaganda is great, though.
  - dathinab 5y ago
    Chine -> banned crypto currencies EU -> plans to strongly control or outright ban crypto currencies US -> might also move against crypto currencies Idk. about India, Japan etc. but if EU and US moved they will likely follow. Just to be clear I'm speaking about crypto currencies like we think about them now, I'm sure there is a future for blockchain based currencies, potentially even spear headed by governments.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Doesn't India pretty well want to control their own money? Even more strongly than others? Not that they at same time aren't willing to provide services, just paid for in fiat...
      - fire 5y ago
        The parent is hinting at Central Bank Digital Currencies, which would in fact give them total control of their own money ( moreso than they have over the physical variant, I believe )
dmitrygr 5y ago
The heroes we need but do not deserve.
ofrzeta 5y ago
I don't get that logic: "We decided to help mining and gaming community", while in reality removing that LHR feature would only help Ethereum miners.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  There is something to be said here for individuals burning electricity to get back some of the extreme purchase cost of their GPU. It won't cover the entire difference between a normal listing price and what you actually pay for a GPU these days, but it helps a little. If you're a gamer and you've bought a 3070 then you can earn back quite a bit of your spendings by brute forcing some crypto calculations when you're not gaming. It'll wear out the GPU a bit faster but all in all it's probably a decent deal.
smokey_circles 5y ago
Does the LHR impact the same calculations performed under gaming load? I feel like nVidia aren't _that_ stupid. But I admit I know nothing about any of this
tyrfing 5y ago
Absolutely insane breach overall, hackers got everything (including unreleased products) and the only potentially mitigating factor is the verilog files for their chips MIGHT be encrypted. If not, it's nothing short of catastrophic.
- Neil44 5y ago
  I think Nvidia has to accept that all that stuff is no longer secret, and work from there. They would be nuts to comply with the demands and I'm sure Lapsus$ knows that but it's good publicity for them (Lapsus$).
codedokode 5y ago
I don't understand why gamers should have any priority over miners and programmers in access to video cards. Mining or computing is a serious business. Gaming is just a way to kill time and kids would get much more benefit if they read books or did sports instead. Also, gamers don't need top video cards, 1 or 2Gb cards are fine for most games. Therefore, all restrictions on hash rate should be removed.
- eganist 5y ago
  If you're mining, buy ASICs that do the job. That way the capacity is available for people who want to game casually, game professionally, render, or compute.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    Requiring an ASIC to mine centralizes mining. Everyone should be able to contribute to the consensus process which is why GPU mining exists. There is a large number of people who already have comupters with graphics cards in them.
    - eganist 5y ago
      > Requiring an ASIC to mine centralizes mining. As compared to graphics cards where people are largely buying cards and dedicating them to the task, how does the use of ASICs centralize mining?
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        >how does the use of ASICs centralize mining? Because any gamer with modern hardware can choose to mine and make a little bit of money
- ranguna 5y ago
  I don't know in which world you live in, but gaming is a serious business as well. Specially the gaming community.
- 5y ago
hyperman1 5y ago
I wonder how professional these criminals are. A crime syndicate would silently ask for money. This seems either a false flag operation for a group wanting something else, or much more likely a kid playing around and finding an unlocked door. That last case, a kid pissing of a powerfull entity with a crime, generally does not end well for the kid. I don't see NVidia publicly giving in and loosing face, so there seems no upside either for the criminal.
- feanaro 5y ago
  So you think nVidia will want to see the release of all of its chip schematics? That's an interesting position, but I fail to see how that would be a good idea for them. Perhaps if they are hoping the hackers will be apprehended before Friday.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    They won't want to, but I suspect they would prefer it to the actions demanded by the ransom. Nobody legitimate can do anything with the released information if the hackers leak it. It's a huge patent red flag. They could with the drivers open sourced.
    - simmerup 5y ago
      I doubt China would have any qualms using the information
    - steerablesafe 5y ago
      NVIDIA could have violated some patents with their design themselves (even unknowingly). There are legitimate reasons why NVIDIA wouldn't want the leak to happen, even if other companies likely wouldn't touch it.
    - feanaro 5y ago
      If you're in certain countries you can't do anything with the leaked information officially. But you can still look at it and learn from it without telling anyone. As long as you conceal the trail, which shouldn't be that hard, you're good to use it. On top of that, there's the issue of potentially violating patents the other poster raised. I'd say those are pretty good arguments for nVidia to try to prevent this scenario.
FridgeSeal 5y ago
> We decided to help mining and gaming community," Lapsus$ members wrote Oh please. You have crypto and a vested interest in making GPU’s viable again. Sorry but I have zero sympathy-crypto miners exacerbated the silicon shortage and leveraged their increased capital to make consumer cards so inordinately difficult to get. So no, suffer.
- napolux 5y ago
  This. Tried to get back to PC gaming for a while. I play on PS5 and XSX but damn, with the price of a performant GPU I can buy 3/4 PS5s or 1 PS5 and a lot of games for it.
  - leodriesch 5y ago
    You’re definitely right about the price, but I bought a PC anyways for the freedom it gives. You can emulate older games, get games for 1/4th of the price on second hand market and choose your store. Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. Even if there’s a lot of room for games in the price difference between console and PC, I’d rather pay the higher fixed cost up front and then have cheaper and more games. Maybe it’s just an ideological thing though and doesn’t make complete economical sense.
    - napolux 5y ago
      Plus I don't usually buy games on consoles for full price... I wait or just buy used
      - leodriesch 5y ago
        Valid point. Nintendo Games are still particularly expensive, even used. Zelda Breath of the Wild still costs 40$ or more where I am.
    - napolux 5y ago
      > Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. LOL. That's my very same reason. Got a Switch in 2021 and I was surprised Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (a game originally for Wii U) was still full price.
avianes 5y ago
Not sure if hackers understand that NVIDIA is not necessarily the only victim if they leak the hardware. This hardware folder potentially contains IPs from other companies and the standard cell library from TSMC
- washadjeffmad 5y ago
  It's an advertisement. Imagine the offers they must be getting from crypto cartels. Even if Nvidia commits to open source, there's no guarantee nothing will get sold off elsewhere, just not in the big public way that will momentarily tank NVDA then probably make it skyrocket just as the chip supply returns another great crypto rush on GPUs begins, if it already hasn't. It's exceptionally good timing for some, isn't it?
chakintosh 5y ago
Probably a stupid question, but even if the hackers release everything, wouldn't be illegal for competitors to use that information since NVIDIA most likely has already patented that?
- usednet 5y ago
  Of course it would be illegal, but how would they prove it? No doubt competitors would take advantage of having the entirety of Nvidia’s architecture.
  - wang_li 5y ago
    Employee calls Nvidia and reports it, receives fat reward.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  If it’s patented then it’s already public.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I'd go a step further and say that any work on the open source Nouveau driver would instantly become a legal hell. When the proprietary code gets dumped illegally, you have to be extremely wary with new submissions to the project because one stolen method and nvidia's lawyers are all over you. This is why leaked Windows source code is actually terrible for products like Proton and ReactOS.
moonchrome 5y ago
OSS terrorists blackmailing a corp into opening their code under threat of releasing IP/trade secrets - cyberpunk future here we come :)
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  My time has come, finally! ;)
  - codezero 5y ago
    I don't think I've seen beetlejuicing on HN before. Well done.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
Linux is the terrorists’ operating system.
mjg59 5y ago
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 GPU firmware blobs. Nouveau is currently entirely hamstrung on the last few generations of Nvidia cards because they run extremely slowly unless appropriate signed firmware is loaded, and Nvidia refuse permission to distribute that firmware. I'm not aware of any case law around whether private keys are copyrightable (I'd assume not, given that they're supposed to be randomly generated), and whether it's a DMCA violation to make use of leaked keys if you don't violate any other technical protection mechanisms. This would potentially (given a lot of work) allow Nouveau to implement equivalent firmware and sign it, but this would presumably still just result in Nvidia switching to different keys for the next architecture. Obviously the calculation differs if Nvidia choose under duress to release the drivers under an open source license, but that doesn't seem likely - this still very much reads as an attempt to extort Nvidia into removing restrictions on crypto mining rather than an earnest attempt to improve open source support for their hardware.
- ggreg84 5y ago
  From the Nouveau devs themselves: https://nitter.eu/_Lyude/status/1498811646697000961 https://nitter.eu/_Lyude/status/1498811646697000961 They claim that leaking anything would actually make their work significantly harder.
  - lifthrasiir 5y ago
    Using leaked source code to Nouveau is illegal whatsoever, and the mere existence of the leak means that devs have to more thoroughly audit incoming contributions. The similar thing happened for ReactOS in 2006; they had to audit all the existing source code for more than a year.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    I doubt the hackers are actually trying to help open source, it probably just occured to them that open sourcing would be a way to somewhat future-proof them not putting those restrictions back in for the next generation of cards I'm not sure if they actually have the expectation that nvidia will meet their demands at all, I certainly wouldn't. Because why would nvidia trust that their word that they won't leak anything is meaningful?
mdoms 5y ago
Ban cryptocurrency yesterday.
pavlovskyi 5y ago
For a long time I lived thinking that I did something wrong working with nvidia drivers. Ubuntu installation comes with no problem every time I did it, but there was tremendous amount of issues which comes exact from installing nvidia drivers. It was so irritating and not intuitive that I always thought that this incosistency and issue generating flow is just matter of time. But it is still in game and installing CUDA Toolkit gave you that feeling like you are applying on junior software engineer to nvidia and it is a technical interview.
chriswep 5y ago
simple @NVIDIA: threat to reduce LHR to 10% if anything else is released
ProtoAES256 5y ago
I absolutely hate Nvidia on my Ubuntu machine geared towards development. It's been about 4 years since I've entered the CUDA(and cudnn) scene for AI development. You'd think I'd be a guru in the installation process by now but I still occasionally make my system unbootable for one reason or another with new releases, or the whole thing "just don't work" outright. It is really, really frustrating since every solution is basically "try again or start anew, we don't have the source so can't help you much sorry".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thysultan 5y ago
We don't negotiate with crypto terrorists — Nvidia
ksec 5y ago
Hypothetically speaking, they could release everything and it still wouldn't damage Nvidia much other than PR and marketing. The drivers code cant be used in open source, as it will be IP theft. Their competitors could see how they are doing things, but it isn't copy and paste, those techniques would still requires years of understanding and implementation on their own hardware. Assuming they are applicable. Even if you have the blueprint of their GPU, you cant bring it to TSMC, Samsung or Intel to build it. Their competitors could see it but again the magic isn't really in the GPU itself. And again just like software, even if AMD and Intel did spot a few moves to copy it will be 3-4 years before it appears on market. I dont know if those code include CUDA, which to me seems to be the most important bit for Nvidia. I also think there are lots of upside for Nvidia to be playing as the victim and just their strategy. From IP licensing to drivers. It will be interesting to see how this play out.
- weego 5y ago
  Having the source leaked can be leveraged as a hindrance to third parties. While it's closed source any coincidentally similar code is just that, a coincidence. When it's out in the open coincidence becomes a potential denial of progress attack. How would you prove without doubt that something with clean-room created? Sounds time consuming and costly.
- narrator 5y ago
  Their Chinese competition would love it. They have a huge need for GPUs in China to run their surveillance infrastructure. That infrastructure is mostly run on NVIDIA chips. I am sure the CCP wouldn't care about the IP issues. They have fabs that could produce good enough chips (12nm), though not as good as TSMC (5nm).
  - rfoo 5y ago
    > That infrastructure is mostly run on NVIDIA chips Not anymore.
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
A bit off-topic, but the fact that criminals asked for help mining, instead of money or crypto-money, just gave me an epiphany: The whole internet is showing the first signs of a digital Resource Curse [1] brought by crypto mining. Crypto mining changed the economics of the digital world in such a drastic way that it is poisoning all kinds of internet interactions. It is not just about disrupting how money used to work, it is disrupting every kind of interaction, even those that had nothing to do with money. Things that were completely economically neutral before, so people did them just for fun, can now be exploited to extract value, so naturally some people do it and the previous innocent/neutral status quo is lost. For example: most free unix shell providers, a fun tradition from nerds from the 90s, had to shut down because now there is such a big economic incentive to abuse such free service. And while writing above I realized that crypto is probably the second internet curse, with Google's algorithm being the first. When Google became the near-monopoly in the early 2000s, linking to a website ceased to be an economic neutral activity, people realized they could extract value from linking, so link spam became a big problem and forever changed the web. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  It's what happens when you throw a pyramid scheme into something - just like with pyramid/mlm schemes in real life, suddenly everything is about optimizing for the scheme. Every conversation becomes a sales pitch.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I'm sure many people would agree with your diagnosis. What's the treatment, though?
  - danaris 5y ago
    Ban crypto mining. Outlaw exchanging cryptocurrencies (directly) to USD (and other fiat currencies, but USD is the big one for now).
    - 5y ago
Aachen 5y ago
Clickbaity title, the demand is the obvious one: Miners aren't happy Nvidia doesn't want to be part of their game and demand this mining ban is lifted. I really hope Nvidia doesn't even consider complying. Screw these people's game and their extortion.
INTPenis 5y ago
If they have the source, can't they just make their own firmware? It's probably not that simple I guess. I'm not a hw guy.
hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
I find three components of this very interesting: They’re requesting an LHR unlock over a ransom, surely you could get $100m out of nvidia with this stuff, how many 3 series cards do you need for LHR to be more equitable, especially when everyone gets the unlock. Maybe it’s about reputation? The fact that they’re ransoming data instead of crypto locking isn’t something I’ve seen before. It’s inevitable once targets start backing up, but interesting it’s the first move they made. The fact that they changed their ransom to include open sourcing drivers. This surely reduces reputation, and makes them look amateur. IANAL but blackmail coercion surely invalidates any otherwise legally binding obligations, right?
ftyers 5y ago
NVIDIA's terrible software (drivers and CUDA) have wasted months of my time. They have what is essentially a monopoly on hardware for "Deep learning" and so this should come as no surprise. Of course to a certain extent this isn't their fault, if AMD or Intel got their acts together they could come up with a much better solution, and if it were free/open-source software people would even pay a premium to be free of NVIDIA's cruel grasp.
cosmiccatnap 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 5y ago
Will they go after Intel and demand they open up the ME next? One can dream...
verisimi 5y ago
I don't approve of blackmail, etc. But, it seems a pretty reasonable request! If you buy a graphics card (or anything) artificially constraining it via software seems wrong. It reminds me of how phones are updated to run more slowly once newer versions are available. It also reminds me of how white goods (washing machines, fridges) have small plastic components Anyway, this is some sort of modern version of 'planned obsolescence'. How any artificial obsolescence is legal or moral, when we are also worried about wasting resources, I don't know! Well, I do know - its cos companies want to make as much money as possible, while letting the public carry the weight of their mistakes.
jrochkind1 5y ago
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? The original version of the demand at least gave nvidia some business incentive to comply. I don't think they've thought through their demands very well.
- krsrhe 5y ago
  They want the driver code public but not the hardware code.
- cornegidouille 5y ago
  That's a good point, although they are threatening to release slightly more than just the drivers ("the complete silicon, graphics, and computer chipset files"). But the legal vs. illegal access is definitely interesting and probably not something they took into account. I don't see, say, AMD stealing from "publicly stolen" technology, I can't imagine the insane lawsuit that would ensue. Maybe some Chinese company might do it...
  - flatiron 5y ago
    who would fab their chips though? i can only imagine tsmc getting an obvious nvidia knock off and refusing to fab it for them for fear nvidia would take their cards somewhere else to fab.
    - Handytinge 5y ago
      Your argument doesn't make sense. If TSMC are the only people who can fab them, why would they been concerned about Nvidia going elsewhere? If there is an elsewhere, that's where the chips can be fabricated.
  - sasaf5 5y ago
Invictus0 5y ago
Would the release of the chip schematics allow a competing nation-state to build its own GPUs? And how likely is that to happen should the files be released?
aasasd 5y ago
By the way, ‘lapsus’ as a slang-ish Russian word was around perhaps until 1970s or 1980s. Quite rare today. Means ‘a dumb mistake’. It comes from Latin, and Wiktionary says that it's used in English and Romance-family languages, but I've never seen it outside of Russian. It might be used in other Slavic languages, though. If the word is not around in Western languages, then presumably it would point to Russian origins, or someone really did their homework to misattribute blame. (Or I might've missed the news where those guys are already uncovered—so far I only saw it being mentioned that the attack is from South America.)
- VPenkov 5y ago
  "Lapse of judgement" is a fairly common expression for a mistake
  - aasasd 5y ago
    ‘Lapse’ yes, ‘lapsus’ no.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  It is used in e.g. fancy academic settings for writing errors.
grogenaut 5y ago
Cybercriminals will release demands or rationale like this in an attempt to sway public favor as well as have the company spend resources on the demand/threat instead of remediation or forensics. They're still criminals threatening and extorting others at the end of the day.
sylware 5y ago
That's why tegra "crippled" driver went into libdrm just recently? Bad timing? Or is this to prepare code "release" namely some full open source driver support? That said, "open source" is not enough anymore: Lean code using simple and very stable in time C (C89 with benign bits of c99/c11 and no more) is as much as important nowadays. Cyber Robin Wood.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Definitely an easily condemnable criminal act - but I completely see where they're coming from. That said, given they have all the code themselves, they can just release everything and we'll remove LHR by ourselves and finally build OSS drivers.
einpoklum 5y ago
Oh, I really wish those hackers would release the sources rather than pursue their dumbass crypto-mining demands... "We decided to help mining and gaming community" - hurting the gaming community, helping the get-rich-quick "community". My own C++ wrappers for the CUDA APIs (shameless self-plug: https://github.com/eyalroz/cuda-api-wrappers/ https://github.com/eyalroz/cuda-api-wrappers/) would really benefit a lot from behind-the-curtains access to the driver; and even if I just know how the internal logic of the driver and the runtime works, without actually being able to hook into that logic - I would already be able to leverage this somewhat in my design considerations. Also, NVIDIA has definitely had this coming in its choice to promote its own proprietary execution ecosystem (CUDA), rather than build everything up over OpenCL or over both; and in keeping so much of its code clsoed.
Ansil849 5y ago
It's Friday. Did the group follow through on their threat?
serverlessmom 5y ago
Hackers trying to make sure crypto users can use GPU's, limiting the supply to gamers? god the Cyberpunk 2077 release was more of a disaster than we thought
outside1234 5y ago
crypto continues to pay dividends...
throwaways85989 5y ago
The hostilities will only cease, if UBI removes the incentives.

720 points by jbredeche 5y ago

Fnoord 5y ago

Unusual demand or plausible deniability?

nikanj 5y ago

This is pretty high on my Cyberpunkometer

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

squarefoot 5y ago

I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.

gjs278 5y ago
randomhodler84 5y ago
- btmiller 5y ago
  That’s a pretty hyperbolic response. There’s always a risk that mismanaged use of energy results in us never reaching Kardashev Type 1 (i.e. we destroy the habitability of the planet before we get there).
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    That is true. However I am responding to another sheer Luddite attitude on a tech forum. Hating a new technology for the sake of it is not progress.
    - ofrzeta 5y ago
      So is liking/hyping a new technology for the sake of it (or for the sake of getting rich).
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Sure, but that doesn’t apply here. I am a technical individual who can make a case for the technology, and have for many years. All you precoiners do is complain that everyone else is getting rich and/or destroying the planet. It Just isn’t so!
        newswasboring 5y ago
        What case do you want to make about technology though? That it is cool is I think pretty much accepted by everyone. The objection there being just because something is cool doesn't mean we do it especially if its at the detriment to the planet we live on. That it is useful? If you have time, please make that case. To avoid having a flamewar over it, lets try to be concrete and cite an actual project (even if in progress)
        randomhodler84 5y ago
      - smokey_circles 5y ago
        Sure, but one side can be substantiated. The Satoshi protocol is not about money. It is a distributed, trust-less consensus algorithm. Finance was just a good candidate to start with. But we can expand that much further. Some strange examples I hear about how this is silly: "You can't have a smart contract act as an employer because it doesn't exist" But neither do companies? They're an abstraction that we agree exists, enforced by law. It needs to be enforced by law because of the issue of trust. But if I have a mechanism that removes trust (merkle trees) then what's the issue? The contract will do what it states it does because that's the only option it has. Granted, it's a touch utopian and I'm not advocating for setting this system up tomorrow. But it's absolutely an achievable goal
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>Bitcoin has been around 13 years at this point and you still don’t get why folks need to use energy to secure their money. In those 13 years it has proven to be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme for cryptobros and probably one of the most wasteful endeavours that humanity has ever started. One can only hope that the next 13 years kill it for good, either by imploding internally, or it being outlawed in every country that can.
  - smokey_circles 5y ago
    > Ponzi scheme Doesn't meet the requirement: New investor money to pay old investors. Which is not to say it's problem free, but that problem is at the exchange level. Art suffers the same flaws. And Yachts. And on and on and on. That's why we have regulations. Desperately need regulation at the fiat/crypto exchange
    - lodovic 5y ago
      Yes it does - Bitcoin is mainly used for speculation. Paying for groceries with Bitcoin is too expensive (transaction fees) and you typically cannot use your Bitcoin savings as a collateral for another investment due to the price volatility. This means that if you want to cash out, you need someone else to invest their "new investor money" in Bitcoin.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Nah, a lot of things are that without being a ponzi, like Amazon stock. It pays nothing. Does nothing. Requires you to find someone who will pay more than you paid and sell it to them to make money. It’s not.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    > it being outlawed in every country that can. Being pedantic for fun. Isn't all crypto currency already outlaws? They operate outside of all the financial laws and regulations we have. In fact I think some proponents are citing this as a feature.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  > There is no better metric of human progress than energy usage. True, but when energy is used to manufacture products or services. When you turn energy into money there's no progress involved and no new jobs are created. The only linked activities which would benefit would be energy creation and the manufacture of mining hardware. Everything else will suffer when more and more money will be diverted to buy more energy (whose prices will of course be dictated by the highest bidder) and more mining farms. Of course I expect people with vested interests in cryptocurrencies to not care at all.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    Countries are get kicked out of the global banking system, and WESTERN countries start confiscating bank accounts. Inflation at levels not seen in 30 years. And that’s just last month. Bitcoin is a product. It autonomously provides a Service. Sound money. Hard money. Censorship resistance and decentralized peer to peer money. It’s ok if you still are skeptical, but don’t wait too long!
    - leereeves 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that it would be a good thing if Russia used cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions?
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        I am suggesting a monetary system that is beyond the influence of the state is a good thing.
        leereeves 5y ago
        Good for criminals and rogue states, certainly.
        randomhodler84 5y ago
        Sure, but also the dissident, someone fleeing a war zone, someone having their life savings destroyed by bankers and politicians… It’s ok if you don’t have a use for decentralized money. I hope you never need it, and continue a sheltered life of luxury and convenience.
- bigbluedots 5y ago
  Yeah, let's piss away a bunch of energy for no good reason and then say we're a more advanced society because of it!
  - smokey_circles 5y ago
    You are mostly describing the mineral mining sector though :D "Shiny metal, ug ug, me dig up". Which is not to say gold has no practical use but let's not pretend that's the only reason why we're mining it
schappim 5y ago
Would seem to be a rather misinformed comment even to a crypto-layperson. I’m surprised we don’t have a chorus of cyptofiles informing you that crypto emits less greenhouse gases than the traditional banking system, and there are coins/tokens that don’t require melting chips to establish proof of work. I can’t talk to the use of crypto currencies for crime, but I would be surprised if the total volume of transactions were greater than that of traditional currencies (ie cash).
- larsrc 5y ago
  A couple of million transactions per day: https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-bitcoin-transactions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b... That's less than the number of private transactions in a moderately sized city, never mind business or financial transactions. Random comparison: NASDAQ alone sees 30-40 million transactions per day. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummary http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummar...
  - schappim 5y ago
    It’d be real interesting to do an analysis of the last mile power usage of the credit card networks / banking system. I wonder if the giant volume and ubiquity of credit card terminals tips the scales.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  ...but I would be surprised if the total volume of transactions were greater than that of traditional currencies (ie cash). You cannot compare the two. If you are poor and someone gives you crypto, you still won't have better food or a better apartment until you turn the crypto into cash. It isn't surprising that a less useful, simple form of transaction notation (which is really what money is and always has been) has less transactions than the sort of currency that can almost always buy you food, let you watch a movie, and pay your rent.
  - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
baby 5y ago
Cryptocurrencies are pretty green besides bitcoin and ethereum
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Also worthless, because they just keep printing them and giving them away to VCs, who then sucker engineers into building em a product/ecosystem. You will see it eventually David!
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    > Also worthless, because they just keep printing them and giving them away to VCs You literally just described what's happened with fiat currencies in the past decade. Endless printing of money and giving it away to big banks. I guess you'll see it eventually randomhodler84.
    - EdwardDiego 5y ago
      Except fiat currencies have a value in the market based on the economies of the countries that issue them. I have yet to see a cryptocurrency that has a value in the market based on anything other than "a bigger fool might come along".
      - mattwilsonn888 5y ago
        I guess you don't understand what value the seal of approval a dollar has - for that is what Bitcoin generates but without the backdoor devaluation and cronyism of private banking.
        EdwardDiego 5y ago
        Sorry, that sentence doesn't make much sense as it is, could you please expand on it?
        5y ago
smokey_circles 5y ago
I'd like to engage with this opinion because I genuinely have no idea how this is the conclusion people reach (that crypto is bad for the environment). The configuration of transistors through which electrons are punched is obviously not the problem (at least I hope it's obvious). So it must be about proof of work chains, right? That they create high demand? That's about the only point I do understand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to meaningfully translate a bitcoin transaction to a carbon cost. There are some mining farms powered by green energy (less altruistic and more about being off grid). But if we're talking about energy usage and environmental damage, we have to talk mining. There is just no debate that mining is THE singular (keyword) greatest threat to the environment. Fracking, acid mine drainage, offshore drilling, sonic bombardments of coastlines, the ridonculous requirements of smelting. The list goes on and on. We are stuck with that industry for a long time though. I'd argue the minerals that constitute the technology you're using to view this comment may have done more damage than bitcoin and co have. In a nutshell, here's my problem with this argument: To suggest that demand is responsible for the damage caused by supply is just a crazy warping of reality. That absolutely does not make sense. There are other, more pressing issues with crypto (like the lack of regulation around fiat exchanges and how they constantly get rugged) and those criticisms are valid, but they get lost in the noise of "how we generate energy is not as bad as how we use it". I just can't get on board with that point of view.
- larsrc 5y ago
  Cryptocurrencies have shown that you can transform energy into money without any of that messy middle step of doing something useful.
  - eru 5y ago
    They prevent double spending attacks. That service is useful for some people. You can of course disagree. Just like you can disagree that building and fueling yachts for rich people is useful.
    - selfportrait 5y ago
0xedd 5y ago
- urthor 5y ago
  > What will you do when the government decides to nullify years of your life spent working? The US Government has nuclear weapons. If the US Government decided one day to start actively screwing me over... I'm fucked. There's no two ways about it. Them zeroing my bank account is going to be the least of my concerns. The argument about "if you use crypto currency you'll be safe from an evil government" holds no sway. The government knows where I sleep. The only way to not get fucked by the US Government, is to make sure the US Government is run by good people. You cannot mitigate an evil government. An evil government has so many tools at its disposal, an individual can do nothing. Hence, I'm forced to trust the US Government. Because if the US Government is untrustworthy, we're all screwed.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    Good news! Some of the megacorps nowadays have power almost equal to that of governments! /s
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I'm no fan of banks, but that doesn't mean I'm about to trust the same small group of people that brought us The DAO, MtGox, OpenSea and the endless churn of crypto scams. Your arguments are the same ones that argue for cash, and not more layers of unaccountable middle men or networks that are controlled by a minority of wealthy stakeholders. I even made the argument for cash using that same exact anecdote about Cyprus that you used about a week ago[1]. At any point the government could order exchanges to take a haircut on deposits and transactions. If that happened, 99% of people who hold cryptocurrency would not have the ability to liquidate it without taking a haircut. Even LocalBitcoins needs to follow KYC laws in the US, and will comply with laws of the country as long as they want to operate in the US. If people used any legal exchange in the US, their wallets are associated with their identifying information and there will be a record of transactions on the blockchain that point back to them should they try to escape the haircut. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30436347.
ezoe 5y ago
Be careful what you wish for. While I agree the current cryptocurrency is a mess, but prohibiting a pure computation cause more harms than good.
- GreenWatermelon 5y ago
  The computations are ok, but exchange with, well, non-crypto currency could be prohibited. Crypto would lose its worth of you can't convert it to dollars in a feasible way. Much of the market is driven by speculative investment and get-rich-quick type of schemes. Of course, criminal organizations could still use it, but I believe it would be harder to launder money using crypto if banks no longer supported it.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    I think a ban on buying and selling crypto might just be good for the cryptocoin ecosystem. The whole idea of cryptocurrency idealists is that it replaces cash transactions, so if there is any value in the system besides pure speculation, the crypto coins should still work as advertised. Services can still accept the coin and goods can be sold for the coin, but you can't launder money through crypto networks anymore. It's crazy how banks are willing to scrutinise anything related to sex work to an extreme extent yet seem perfectly willing to support the latest weekly pump and dump by letting people exchange money for cryptocurrency at random exchanges.
- paulmd 5y ago
  That ship has sailed. FP64 is artificially limited on AMD 290X graphics cards, as is workstation performance in enterprise software, and neither of those ideas was new at the time. That ship sailed decades ago, in fact. And in none of these cases, by the way, is computation prohibited. LHR cards are still capable of mining. A 290X can still run Solidworks. The choice of "prohibited" here is deliberately inflammatory - a word like "slowed" or "reduced" is more appropriate. (But it is true there are cases like ECC on AMD APUs where it actually is fully prohibited.)
i67vw3 5y ago
Could you tell your daily routine? I would like to calculate your carbon footprint and compare with mine to see whose is higher. By it, we can figure if you or me (an average cryptocurrency user) is harming the planet more.

chmod775 5y ago

> So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either: Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets... well, secret OR Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver's secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too! Interesting. Someone got really fed up with them. I don't think their binary blob ever made them any friends.

DangitBobby 5y ago
I definitely support making GPUs less attractive to miners. I'd buy a card that could be remotely disabled when usage patterns matched crypto mining if it meant I could spend MSRP on a modern card.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Is there some practical way to delineate the two product usages that isn't arbitrary I wonder? Maybe make mining only cards more performant and affordable than consumer graphics cards, so that consumer cards will drop in price from less demand? I find it hard to believe that a use case specific device wouldn't be able to dethrone graphics cards as the better choice for miners at the right price, and it should be cheaper right? No need for all that extra graphics related componentry like visual ports etc. I know stuff like that is already on the market, but it's usually more expensive as they are from more niche manufacturing. NVidia has the scale to make a similar device more affordable I imagine.
  - randomsilence 5y ago
    You would have to saturate the market with specific mining devices. Like with bitcoin ASIC miners, the crypto mining demands have to increase to the point where using gaming graphic cards becomes unprofitable. Otherwise miners will buy the specific mining devices and the gaming devices. The problem is that Etherum was designed to resist ASIC approaches. Instead of locking cards down, Nvidia could manage the supply. They could sell their cards in cooperation with Steam: Only people with an active steam account are eligible to a new card. If their performance stats don't improve after the purchase, which means they have resold their hardware, they won't be allowed to buy another card.

nikau 5y ago

Pity they don't have the driver source code to make their own uncrippled firmware...

EMIRELADERO 5y ago
They do actually, in fact it was already leaked like a week ago. (the integ gpu drv RAR file has it + CUDA and more goodies)
- ranger_danger 5y ago
  Integrated NVIDIA GPU? What do you mean?
  - bcook 5y ago
    A quick Googling shows that "integdev_gpu_drv.rar" is the filename the hackers released.
    - tt365 5y ago
      hi
    - tt365 5y ago
      integdev_gpu_drv.rar

nojs 5y ago

> Nvidia introduced LHR in February 2021 with the launch of its GeForce RTX 3060 models. Three months later, the company brought LHR to its GeForce RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti graphics cards. The reason: to make the cards less desirable to people mining Ethereum and possibly other types of cryptocurrencies. What a bizarre move. Why would they do this?

gruez 5y ago
1. Positive PR from "helping gamers" 2. Product segmentation (nvidia also make mining cards)
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  3. To actually help gamers and other legitimate users of GPUs
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    I’m sorry you are being outbid by another guy who wants to mine with a graphics card, but who are you to say that guy securing a censorship resistant and decentralized monetary system is less legit than your leisure time amateur rocket league tournament? If the owner uses it to train a ML model? Is that legit then? Or can general purpose GPUs only be single purpose for games. For gamers?
    - etataetaet 5y ago
      Or what about that guy finalizing their crypto rug pull? There are just too many bad actors in the crypto community. Most of it seems to be scams and over hyped coins that are completely useless.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Don’t disagree with you. But none of that has anything to do with folks doing PoW to secure a ledger. Infrastructure providers can’t really be blamed for the bandits. Nobody likes thieves, and Bitcoin specifically limits the power of the biggest ones.

httpz 5y ago

>"We decided to help mining and gaming community," I don't understand how this demand helps the gaming community. Wouldn't this drive up the crypto-motivated demand for GPUs even more and hurt the gaming community?

Godel_unicode 5y ago
I think the argument is that driver source being open could help the (tiny!) Linux gaming community, but I agree. This is about mining.
- 0xedd 5y ago
  Percentage wise it looks small but numbers are impressive. Monthly active steam users using Linux was reported at over 1 million last year https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
  - modeless 5y ago
    That will easily double in the next year with the release of the $399 Steam Deck and accompanying Proton and Steam improvements. Linux is finally about to become a serious gaming platform. (No thanks to Nvidia)
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      Steam deck uses AMD GPUs though, so this wouldn't help.
      - modeless 5y ago
        But the improvements Valve is making to Steam, Proton, and other areas along with game developers paying more attention to Linux compatibility will benefit all Linux users, not just Steam Deck users, and make Linux a more popular gaming platform even among people with Nvidia PCs. Yesterday I installed Steam on my Linux machine and downloaded a random game that has no Linux port and played it. It worked perfectly, just like Windows. It was amazing.

nharada 5y ago

> We decided to help mining and gaming community How does removing LHR help the gaming community?

gambiting 5y ago
It doesn't, it's just a PR statement to get more people on board.
Zenbit_UX 5y ago
Read the article? Nvidia released it to make GPUs less desirable to crypto miners so gamers can actually get their hands on some.
- ranguna 5y ago
  Read the OP's question ? If "nvidia released it [LHR] to make GPUs less desirable to crypto miners", then, "How does removing LHR help the _gaming_ community?"
maccolgan 5y ago
Allows owners to make back some of the money spent on the hardware via mining, a la NiceHash and friends.

charcircuit 5y ago

I imagine Nvidia doesn't own the rights to the complete source code of the driver. Even if they wanted to open source it things move slow in big companies.

modeless 5y ago
AMD and Intel did it. The excuses ring hollow.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  At least from my understanding AMD did so by making a new open source driver while the old one remained closed.
  - modeless 5y ago
    That's a fine way to do it and Nvidia should have started 10 years ago.
  - 0xedd 5y ago
    Irrelevant. It would be relevant if others could write an open source driver. Which, effectively, they can't.
rav 5y ago
I would imagine that ownership of Nvidia's drivers would be more clear cut than most open source projects. Wouldn't it only be Nvidia's employees and contractors that have worked on the driver code? Then by default Nvidia would own the rights. If Nvidia doesn't own the code, do you then imagine they're in a sort of licensing agreement with the rightsholders that allows them to distribute the binary blobs but not the code? I don't understand what situation would lead a corporate-sponsored closed source project such as Nvidia's drivers to be in a position of complicated ownership.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  It could be as simple as using a third party library or snippet of code which they don't have the license to give out the source code for.

fjfbsufhdvfy 5y ago

So when do we ban cryptocurrencies already? The only use of this crap is crime.

randomhodler84 5y ago
Never, actually. Also you are wrong that the only use is crime. There are literally millions of stories in the last 13 years of cryptocurrency that demonstrate this. But of course keep screaming at the sun if you wish.
- imilk 5y ago
  Millions? I'd struggle to name 3.
  - randomhodler84 5y ago
    I couldn’t name 3 baseball players, but that doesn’t mean none exist. It just means I’m ignorant of baseball.
    - ofrzeta 5y ago
      Still "millions of stories" is quite the exaggeration. Or do you count "someone bought and sold crypto coins" as a story?
  - rzzzt 5y ago
    I'll start: the 10k pizza
- dathinab 5y ago
  Well, many of the especially relevant stories where still illegal. Sure ethically they where "right" and not illegal from a EU POV, but still illegal in the country they happened. Besides that most other stories are people getting rich by high-risk speculative investments. But the problem with mass investments into high-risk speculative investments is that they tend to create bubbles which can destabilize the economy, so not really that grate either. There are a lot of good use-cases for the technology behind crypto currencies. But much of the current crypto currency landscape is not grate a lot bubbles, a lot pyramid schemes and scams, a lot of things which conflict with money laundering regulations. And many other problems. I'm fully sure that the related technology (blockchain etc.) will have a future, I'm not sure about crypto currencies like we have them now.

bobsmooth 5y ago

Imagine if they actually leaked the driver source and verilog files though...

randomsilence 5y ago
It's the 'secret Coca Cola recipe' leaked to Pepsi situation: The source code is still protected by copy rights and patents. AMD cannot just take it.
- travbrack 5y ago
  There are countries that don't care about US IP laws. China comes to mind.
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 5y ago
    And, with the current crisis in mind, Russia. They'll be looking to expanding their local semiconductor production from now on.
    - leereeves 5y ago
      Having chip designs without a state of the art fab won't help them any more than having software without a computer would. For China and Russia to replace TSMC they'd need TSMC's (and ASML's) secrets, as well as nVidia's.
      - fire 5y ago
        That's if we're assuming they want to directly reproduce existing hardware - I imagine they'd actually leverage it as something their engineers can learn from for future advancement
    - mapcars 5y ago
      I can tell you Russia is so far behind in technology they won't be able to do anything with this knowledge.

bouncycastle 5y ago

I'm not a big fan of limiting hardware to run only approved software. One day it's for limiting crypto mining, the next day it will be for limiting our ability to use strong encryption. It's a slippery slope.

DangitBobby 5y ago
It would be much easier if crypto could just die out.
- schappim 5y ago
  Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though. Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.
    - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
      I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though. Exactly this. I'm guessing if they needed food they'd be out of luck.
      - schappim 5y ago
        You’re probably not wrong.
    - schappim 5y ago
      > I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry. > boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists It is probably overstated. Orders of magnitude more criminal activity would be going through cash and even orgs that are meant to KYC, such as Western Union or even iTunes gift certificates. How many grannies are sending crypto vs providing logins to their bank accounts? I’m not a crypto-apologist, I just haven’t heard any solid arguments against it that can’t also be said about cash or the traditional banking system.

dathinab 5y ago

They say they want to help miners, but... Congratulations: They just gave lawmakers another arguments to move against crypto currencies, especially PoS based ones.

baby 5y ago
You mean PoW right?
- dathinab 5y ago
  yes
0xedd 5y ago
The US is a small part of the world. Just a reminder. You can open a bank account in the EU that allows depositing cryptocurrency. The US is on the decline. It's propaganda is great, though.
- dathinab 5y ago
  Chine -> banned crypto currencies EU -> plans to strongly control or outright ban crypto currencies US -> might also move against crypto currencies Idk. about India, Japan etc. but if EU and US moved they will likely follow. Just to be clear I'm speaking about crypto currencies like we think about them now, I'm sure there is a future for blockchain based currencies, potentially even spear headed by governments.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Doesn't India pretty well want to control their own money? Even more strongly than others? Not that they at same time aren't willing to provide services, just paid for in fiat...
    - fire 5y ago
      The parent is hinting at Central Bank Digital Currencies, which would in fact give them total control of their own money ( moreso than they have over the physical variant, I believe )

dmitrygr 5y ago

The heroes we need but do not deserve.

ofrzeta 5y ago

I don't get that logic: "We decided to help mining and gaming community", while in reality removing that LHR feature would only help Ethereum miners.

jeroenhd 5y ago
There is something to be said here for individuals burning electricity to get back some of the extreme purchase cost of their GPU. It won't cover the entire difference between a normal listing price and what you actually pay for a GPU these days, but it helps a little. If you're a gamer and you've bought a 3070 then you can earn back quite a bit of your spendings by brute forcing some crypto calculations when you're not gaming. It'll wear out the GPU a bit faster but all in all it's probably a decent deal.

smokey_circles 5y ago

Does the LHR impact the same calculations performed under gaming load? I feel like nVidia aren't _that_ stupid. But I admit I know nothing about any of this

tyrfing 5y ago

Absolutely insane breach overall, hackers got everything (including unreleased products) and the only potentially mitigating factor is the verilog files for their chips MIGHT be encrypted. If not, it's nothing short of catastrophic.

Neil44 5y ago
I think Nvidia has to accept that all that stuff is no longer secret, and work from there. They would be nuts to comply with the demands and I'm sure Lapsus$ knows that but it's good publicity for them (Lapsus$).

codedokode 5y ago

I don't understand why gamers should have any priority over miners and programmers in access to video cards. Mining or computing is a serious business. Gaming is just a way to kill time and kids would get much more benefit if they read books or did sports instead. Also, gamers don't need top video cards, 1 or 2Gb cards are fine for most games. Therefore, all restrictions on hash rate should be removed.

eganist 5y ago
If you're mining, buy ASICs that do the job. That way the capacity is available for people who want to game casually, game professionally, render, or compute.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Requiring an ASIC to mine centralizes mining. Everyone should be able to contribute to the consensus process which is why GPU mining exists. There is a large number of people who already have comupters with graphics cards in them.
  - eganist 5y ago
    > Requiring an ASIC to mine centralizes mining. As compared to graphics cards where people are largely buying cards and dedicating them to the task, how does the use of ASICs centralize mining?
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      >how does the use of ASICs centralize mining? Because any gamer with modern hardware can choose to mine and make a little bit of money
ranguna 5y ago
I don't know in which world you live in, but gaming is a serious business as well. Specially the gaming community.
5y ago

hyperman1 5y ago

I wonder how professional these criminals are. A crime syndicate would silently ask for money. This seems either a false flag operation for a group wanting something else, or much more likely a kid playing around and finding an unlocked door. That last case, a kid pissing of a powerfull entity with a crime, generally does not end well for the kid. I don't see NVidia publicly giving in and loosing face, so there seems no upside either for the criminal.

feanaro 5y ago
So you think nVidia will want to see the release of all of its chip schematics? That's an interesting position, but I fail to see how that would be a good idea for them. Perhaps if they are hoping the hackers will be apprehended before Friday.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  They won't want to, but I suspect they would prefer it to the actions demanded by the ransom. Nobody legitimate can do anything with the released information if the hackers leak it. It's a huge patent red flag. They could with the drivers open sourced.
  - simmerup 5y ago
    I doubt China would have any qualms using the information
  - steerablesafe 5y ago
    NVIDIA could have violated some patents with their design themselves (even unknowingly). There are legitimate reasons why NVIDIA wouldn't want the leak to happen, even if other companies likely wouldn't touch it.
  - feanaro 5y ago
    If you're in certain countries you can't do anything with the leaked information officially. But you can still look at it and learn from it without telling anyone. As long as you conceal the trail, which shouldn't be that hard, you're good to use it. On top of that, there's the issue of potentially violating patents the other poster raised. I'd say those are pretty good arguments for nVidia to try to prevent this scenario.

FridgeSeal 5y ago

> We decided to help mining and gaming community," Lapsus$ members wrote Oh please. You have crypto and a vested interest in making GPU’s viable again. Sorry but I have zero sympathy-crypto miners exacerbated the silicon shortage and leveraged their increased capital to make consumer cards so inordinately difficult to get. So no, suffer.

napolux 5y ago
This. Tried to get back to PC gaming for a while. I play on PS5 and XSX but damn, with the price of a performant GPU I can buy 3/4 PS5s or 1 PS5 and a lot of games for it.
- leodriesch 5y ago
  You’re definitely right about the price, but I bought a PC anyways for the freedom it gives. You can emulate older games, get games for 1/4th of the price on second hand market and choose your store. Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. Even if there’s a lot of room for games in the price difference between console and PC, I’d rather pay the higher fixed cost up front and then have cheaper and more games. Maybe it’s just an ideological thing though and doesn’t make complete economical sense.
  - napolux 5y ago
    Plus I don't usually buy games on consoles for full price... I wait or just buy used
    - leodriesch 5y ago
      Valid point. Nintendo Games are still particularly expensive, even used. Zelda Breath of the Wild still costs 40$ or more where I am.
  - napolux 5y ago
    > Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming. LOL. That's my very same reason. Got a Switch in 2021 and I was surprised Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (a game originally for Wii U) was still full price.

avianes 5y ago

Not sure if hackers understand that NVIDIA is not necessarily the only victim if they leak the hardware. This hardware folder potentially contains IPs from other companies and the standard cell library from TSMC

washadjeffmad 5y ago
It's an advertisement. Imagine the offers they must be getting from crypto cartels. Even if Nvidia commits to open source, there's no guarantee nothing will get sold off elsewhere, just not in the big public way that will momentarily tank NVDA then probably make it skyrocket just as the chip supply returns another great crypto rush on GPUs begins, if it already hasn't. It's exceptionally good timing for some, isn't it?

chakintosh 5y ago

Probably a stupid question, but even if the hackers release everything, wouldn't be illegal for competitors to use that information since NVIDIA most likely has already patented that?

usednet 5y ago
Of course it would be illegal, but how would they prove it? No doubt competitors would take advantage of having the entirety of Nvidia’s architecture.
- wang_li 5y ago
  Employee calls Nvidia and reports it, receives fat reward.
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
If it’s patented then it’s already public.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I'd go a step further and say that any work on the open source Nouveau driver would instantly become a legal hell. When the proprietary code gets dumped illegally, you have to be extremely wary with new submissions to the project because one stolen method and nvidia's lawyers are all over you. This is why leaked Windows source code is actually terrible for products like Proton and ReactOS.

moonchrome 5y ago

OSS terrorists blackmailing a corp into opening their code under threat of releasing IP/trade secrets - cyberpunk future here we come :)

cyberpunk 5y ago
My time has come, finally! ;)
- codezero 5y ago
  I don't think I've seen beetlejuicing on HN before. Well done.

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

Linux is the terrorists’ operating system.

mjg59 5y ago

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 GPU firmware blobs. Nouveau is currently entirely hamstrung on the last few generations of Nvidia cards because they run extremely slowly unless appropriate signed firmware is loaded, and Nvidia refuse permission to distribute that firmware. I'm not aware of any case law around whether private keys are copyrightable (I'd assume not, given that they're supposed to be randomly generated), and whether it's a DMCA violation to make use of leaked keys if you don't violate any other technical protection mechanisms. This would potentially (given a lot of work) allow Nouveau to implement equivalent firmware and sign it, but this would presumably still just result in Nvidia switching to different keys for the next architecture. Obviously the calculation differs if Nvidia choose under duress to release the drivers under an open source license, but that doesn't seem likely - this still very much reads as an attempt to extort Nvidia into removing restrictions on crypto mining rather than an earnest attempt to improve open source support for their hardware.

ggreg84 5y ago
From the Nouveau devs themselves: https://nitter.eu/_Lyude/status/1498811646697000961 https://nitter.eu/_Lyude/status/1498811646697000961 They claim that leaking anything would actually make their work significantly harder.
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  Using leaked source code to Nouveau is illegal whatsoever, and the mere existence of the leak means that devs have to more thoroughly audit incoming contributions. The similar thing happened for ReactOS in 2006; they had to audit all the existing source code for more than a year.
- asddubs 5y ago
  I doubt the hackers are actually trying to help open source, it probably just occured to them that open sourcing would be a way to somewhat future-proof them not putting those restrictions back in for the next generation of cards I'm not sure if they actually have the expectation that nvidia will meet their demands at all, I certainly wouldn't. Because why would nvidia trust that their word that they won't leak anything is meaningful?

mdoms 5y ago

Ban cryptocurrency yesterday.

pavlovskyi 5y ago

For a long time I lived thinking that I did something wrong working with nvidia drivers. Ubuntu installation comes with no problem every time I did it, but there was tremendous amount of issues which comes exact from installing nvidia drivers. It was so irritating and not intuitive that I always thought that this incosistency and issue generating flow is just matter of time. But it is still in game and installing CUDA Toolkit gave you that feeling like you are applying on junior software engineer to nvidia and it is a technical interview.

chriswep 5y ago

simple @NVIDIA: threat to reduce LHR to 10% if anything else is released

ProtoAES256 5y ago

I absolutely hate Nvidia on my Ubuntu machine geared towards development. It's been about 4 years since I've entered the CUDA(and cudnn) scene for AI development. You'd think I'd be a guru in the installation process by now but I still occasionally make my system unbootable for one reason or another with new releases, or the whole thing "just don't work" outright. It is really, really frustrating since every solution is basically "try again or start anew, we don't have the source so can't help you much sorry".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thysultan 5y ago

We don't negotiate with crypto terrorists — Nvidia

ksec 5y ago

Hypothetically speaking, they could release everything and it still wouldn't damage Nvidia much other than PR and marketing. The drivers code cant be used in open source, as it will be IP theft. Their competitors could see how they are doing things, but it isn't copy and paste, those techniques would still requires years of understanding and implementation on their own hardware. Assuming they are applicable. Even if you have the blueprint of their GPU, you cant bring it to TSMC, Samsung or Intel to build it. Their competitors could see it but again the magic isn't really in the GPU itself. And again just like software, even if AMD and Intel did spot a few moves to copy it will be 3-4 years before it appears on market. I dont know if those code include CUDA, which to me seems to be the most important bit for Nvidia. I also think there are lots of upside for Nvidia to be playing as the victim and just their strategy. From IP licensing to drivers. It will be interesting to see how this play out.

weego 5y ago
Having the source leaked can be leveraged as a hindrance to third parties. While it's closed source any coincidentally similar code is just that, a coincidence. When it's out in the open coincidence becomes a potential denial of progress attack. How would you prove without doubt that something with clean-room created? Sounds time consuming and costly.
narrator 5y ago
Their Chinese competition would love it. They have a huge need for GPUs in China to run their surveillance infrastructure. That infrastructure is mostly run on NVIDIA chips. I am sure the CCP wouldn't care about the IP issues. They have fabs that could produce good enough chips (12nm), though not as good as TSMC (5nm).
- rfoo 5y ago
  > That infrastructure is mostly run on NVIDIA chips Not anymore.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago

A bit off-topic, but the fact that criminals asked for help mining, instead of money or crypto-money, just gave me an epiphany: The whole internet is showing the first signs of a digital Resource Curse [1] brought by crypto mining. Crypto mining changed the economics of the digital world in such a drastic way that it is poisoning all kinds of internet interactions. It is not just about disrupting how money used to work, it is disrupting every kind of interaction, even those that had nothing to do with money. Things that were completely economically neutral before, so people did them just for fun, can now be exploited to extract value, so naturally some people do it and the previous innocent/neutral status quo is lost. For example: most free unix shell providers, a fun tradition from nerds from the 90s, had to shut down because now there is such a big economic incentive to abuse such free service. And while writing above I realized that crypto is probably the second internet curse, with Google's algorithm being the first. When Google became the near-monopoly in the early 2000s, linking to a website ceased to be an economic neutral activity, people realized they could extract value from linking, so link spam became a big problem and forever changed the web. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
It's what happens when you throw a pyramid scheme into something - just like with pyramid/mlm schemes in real life, suddenly everything is about optimizing for the scheme. Every conversation becomes a sales pitch.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I'm sure many people would agree with your diagnosis. What's the treatment, though?
- danaris 5y ago
  Ban crypto mining. Outlaw exchanging cryptocurrencies (directly) to USD (and other fiat currencies, but USD is the big one for now).
  - 5y ago

Aachen 5y ago

Clickbaity title, the demand is the obvious one: Miners aren't happy Nvidia doesn't want to be part of their game and demand this mining ban is lifted. I really hope Nvidia doesn't even consider complying. Screw these people's game and their extortion.

INTPenis 5y ago

If they have the source, can't they just make their own firmware? It's probably not that simple I guess. I'm not a hw guy.

hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago

I find three components of this very interesting: They’re requesting an LHR unlock over a ransom, surely you could get $100m out of nvidia with this stuff, how many 3 series cards do you need for LHR to be more equitable, especially when everyone gets the unlock. Maybe it’s about reputation? The fact that they’re ransoming data instead of crypto locking isn’t something I’ve seen before. It’s inevitable once targets start backing up, but interesting it’s the first move they made. The fact that they changed their ransom to include open sourcing drivers. This surely reduces reputation, and makes them look amateur. IANAL but blackmail coercion surely invalidates any otherwise legally binding obligations, right?

ftyers 5y ago

NVIDIA's terrible software (drivers and CUDA) have wasted months of my time. They have what is essentially a monopoly on hardware for "Deep learning" and so this should come as no surprise. Of course to a certain extent this isn't their fault, if AMD or Intel got their acts together they could come up with a much better solution, and if it were free/open-source software people would even pay a premium to be free of NVIDIA's cruel grasp.

cosmiccatnap 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 5y ago

Will they go after Intel and demand they open up the ME next? One can dream...

verisimi 5y ago

I don't approve of blackmail, etc. But, it seems a pretty reasonable request! If you buy a graphics card (or anything) artificially constraining it via software seems wrong. It reminds me of how phones are updated to run more slowly once newer versions are available. It also reminds me of how white goods (washing machines, fridges) have small plastic components Anyway, this is some sort of modern version of 'planned obsolescence'. How any artificial obsolescence is legal or moral, when we are also worried about wasting resources, I don't know! Well, I do know - its cos companies want to make as much money as possible, while letting the public carry the weight of their mistakes.

jrochkind1 5y ago

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? The original version of the demand at least gave nvidia some business incentive to comply. I don't think they've thought through their demands very well.

krsrhe 5y ago
They want the driver code public but not the hardware code.
cornegidouille 5y ago
That's a good point, although they are threatening to release slightly more than just the drivers ("the complete silicon, graphics, and computer chipset files"). But the legal vs. illegal access is definitely interesting and probably not something they took into account. I don't see, say, AMD stealing from "publicly stolen" technology, I can't imagine the insane lawsuit that would ensue. Maybe some Chinese company might do it...
- flatiron 5y ago
  who would fab their chips though? i can only imagine tsmc getting an obvious nvidia knock off and refusing to fab it for them for fear nvidia would take their cards somewhere else to fab.
  - Handytinge 5y ago
    Your argument doesn't make sense. If TSMC are the only people who can fab them, why would they been concerned about Nvidia going elsewhere? If there is an elsewhere, that's where the chips can be fabricated.
- sasaf5 5y ago

Invictus0 5y ago

Would the release of the chip schematics allow a competing nation-state to build its own GPUs? And how likely is that to happen should the files be released?

aasasd 5y ago

By the way, ‘lapsus’ as a slang-ish Russian word was around perhaps until 1970s or 1980s. Quite rare today. Means ‘a dumb mistake’. It comes from Latin, and Wiktionary says that it's used in English and Romance-family languages, but I've never seen it outside of Russian. It might be used in other Slavic languages, though. If the word is not around in Western languages, then presumably it would point to Russian origins, or someone really did their homework to misattribute blame. (Or I might've missed the news where those guys are already uncovered—so far I only saw it being mentioned that the attack is from South America.)

VPenkov 5y ago
"Lapse of judgement" is a fairly common expression for a mistake
- aasasd 5y ago
  ‘Lapse’ yes, ‘lapsus’ no.
rightbyte 5y ago
It is used in e.g. fancy academic settings for writing errors.

grogenaut 5y ago

Cybercriminals will release demands or rationale like this in an attempt to sway public favor as well as have the company spend resources on the demand/threat instead of remediation or forensics. They're still criminals threatening and extorting others at the end of the day.

sylware 5y ago

That's why tegra "crippled" driver went into libdrm just recently? Bad timing? Or is this to prepare code "release" namely some full open source driver support? That said, "open source" is not enough anymore: Lean code using simple and very stable in time C (C89 with benign bits of c99/c11 and no more) is as much as important nowadays. Cyber Robin Wood.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Definitely an easily condemnable criminal act - but I completely see where they're coming from. That said, given they have all the code themselves, they can just release everything and we'll remove LHR by ourselves and finally build OSS drivers.

einpoklum 5y ago

Oh, I really wish those hackers would release the sources rather than pursue their dumbass crypto-mining demands... "We decided to help mining and gaming community" - hurting the gaming community, helping the get-rich-quick "community". My own C++ wrappers for the CUDA APIs (shameless self-plug: https://github.com/eyalroz/cuda-api-wrappers/ https://github.com/eyalroz/cuda-api-wrappers/) would really benefit a lot from behind-the-curtains access to the driver; and even if I just know how the internal logic of the driver and the runtime works, without actually being able to hook into that logic - I would already be able to leverage this somewhat in my design considerations. Also, NVIDIA has definitely had this coming in its choice to promote its own proprietary execution ecosystem (CUDA), rather than build everything up over OpenCL or over both; and in keeping so much of its code clsoed.

Ansil849 5y ago

It's Friday. Did the group follow through on their threat?

serverlessmom 5y ago

Hackers trying to make sure crypto users can use GPU's, limiting the supply to gamers? god the Cyberpunk 2077 release was more of a disaster than we thought

outside1234 5y ago

crypto continues to pay dividends...

throwaways85989 5y ago

The hostilities will only cease, if UBI removes the incentives.