5 ms·

Nvidia: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware

bigyabai 1y ago
...yet. I like Nvidia. I got Nvidia products. But I'm also not stupid; there's a programmable microcontroller inside my GPU that decides whether or not everything works right. It accepts signed firmware when you update it and can presumably be reprogrammed via an OTA update to refuse functionality or outright brick the hardware. If Nvidia wanted to, they could absolutely killswitch my GPU. This is the part of modern consumer electronics we all have to satisfy ourselves with. It's the case with your iPhone, your Nintendo Switch, probably your desktop computer too. We've long since crossed this Rubicon of trust in the hopes private interests won't eventually betray us down the road.
- nabla9 1y ago
  The good thing is that as long as you are not person of interest in some spy stuff, you get the same firmware as everyone else. It's not Nvidia vs you, It's Nvidia vs every customer. Black-hat hackers, white-hat hackers, comp-sec companies working for Nvidia customers, foreign governments, all have incentive to find out if there is a backdoor. For profit, security, exploit or fame.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
My "No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware." T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. Anyway, I missed the news - apparently this is in response to a proposed bill by one Bill Foster that would mandate tracking & kill switch technology in chips that could be sent overseas: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-gpu-tracking-tech-proposed-by-us-lawmakers-in-smuggling-crackdown https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-gpu-t... (The body of the article doesn't mention kill-switch, but the cached search engine results do.)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
blitzar 1y ago
Didn't Nvidia put in a kill switch to disable crypto mining on their cards?
- gruez 1y ago
  If you're talking about the stuff they added that detects crypto mining and then hobbles performance, that's not really a "killwitch", it's just product segmentation. Windows for instance has a totally arbitrary limit that non-server editions can't have more than one RDP session going on the same time. This is a purely artificial constraint, but you can hardly claim that that's a "killswitch".
  - blitzar 1y ago
    It would be "product segmentation" if they had USA GPUs that were hobbled if they detected they had left the land of the free or someone tried to speak a foreign language to them.
orbital-decay 1y ago
Pretty good. If they want to back up those words with actions, they can start by disabling pervasive telemetry in their drivers, for example.
vermaden 1y ago
No CUDA on FreeBSD. No Open Source Drivers.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  If I had a list of Open Source software that doesn't support FreeBSD, I'd never have to go out to buy toilet paper again in my life.
  - vermaden 1y ago
    Its strange because NVIDIA officially supports FreeBSD and provides official binary driver for FreeBSD ... but for some reason known only to NVIDIA - it does not contain/support CUDA on FreeBSD.
belter 1y ago
This article should be titled "Nvidia: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware... YET"

...yet. I like Nvidia. I got Nvidia products. But I'm also not stupid; there's a programmable microcontroller inside my GPU that decides whether or not everything works right. It accepts signed firmware when you update it and can presumably be reprogrammed via an OTA update to refuse functionality or outright brick the hardware. If Nvidia wanted to, they could absolutely killswitch my GPU. This is the part of modern consumer electronics we all have to satisfy ourselves with. It's the case with your iPhone, your Nintendo Switch, probably your desktop computer too. We've long since crossed this Rubicon of trust in the hopes private interests won't eventually betray us down the road.

nabla9 1y ago
The good thing is that as long as you are not person of interest in some spy stuff, you get the same firmware as everyone else. It's not Nvidia vs you, It's Nvidia vs every customer. Black-hat hackers, white-hat hackers, comp-sec companies working for Nvidia customers, foreign governments, all have incentive to find out if there is a backdoor. For profit, security, exploit or fame.

pavel_lishin 1y ago

My "No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware." T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt. Anyway, I missed the news - apparently this is in response to a proposed bill by one Bill Foster that would mandate tracking & kill switch technology in chips that could be sent overseas: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-gpu-tracking-tech-proposed-by-us-lawmakers-in-smuggling-crackdown https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-gpu-t... (The body of the article doesn't mention kill-switch, but the cached search engine results do.)

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

blitzar 1y ago

Didn't Nvidia put in a kill switch to disable crypto mining on their cards?

gruez 1y ago
If you're talking about the stuff they added that detects crypto mining and then hobbles performance, that's not really a "killwitch", it's just product segmentation. Windows for instance has a totally arbitrary limit that non-server editions can't have more than one RDP session going on the same time. This is a purely artificial constraint, but you can hardly claim that that's a "killswitch".
- blitzar 1y ago
  It would be "product segmentation" if they had USA GPUs that were hobbled if they detected they had left the land of the free or someone tried to speak a foreign language to them.

orbital-decay 1y ago

Pretty good. If they want to back up those words with actions, they can start by disabling pervasive telemetry in their drivers, for example.

vermaden 1y ago

No CUDA on FreeBSD. No Open Source Drivers.

bigyabai 1y ago
If I had a list of Open Source software that doesn't support FreeBSD, I'd never have to go out to buy toilet paper again in my life.
- vermaden 1y ago
  Its strange because NVIDIA officially supports FreeBSD and provides official binary driver for FreeBSD ... but for some reason known only to NVIDIA - it does not contain/support CUDA on FreeBSD.

belter 1y ago

This article should be titled "Nvidia: No Backdoors. No Kill Switches. No Spyware... YET"