Saturday, February 26th 2022
NVIDIA has Allegedly Been Hacked, Internal Systems Compromised
According to several reports in various media, NVIDIA has been hacked and several key systems, such as email and its internal developer tools have been down for the past few days. According to CRN, NVIDIA is investigating "an incident" and the company issued the following statement to the publication. "Our business and commercial activities continue uninterrupted. We are still working to evaluate the nature and scope of the event and don't have any additional information to share at this time."
In a regulatory filing back in October 2021, NVIDIA seemingly warned its shareholders of a future attack on the company of some kind. NVIDIA claimed that it's hard to protect against attacks, as the attacks are getting more "prevalent and sophisticated". The filing went on to say "Our efforts to prevent and overcome these and similar challenges could increase our expenses and may not be successful. We may experience interruptions, delays, cessation of service and loss of existing or potential customers." Based on media reports, it's currently not known whether any data has been stolen or damaged and it appears that the attacker(s) haven't been identified.Update: According to vx-underground, it's a South American "extortion group" by the name LAPSUS$ that's behind the hack. Based on screenshots provided by vx-underground, NVIDIA has allegedly hacked LAPSUS$ back and encrypted the data that was stolen. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, it seems like LAPSUS$ had backups of the data. The group claims to be sitting on around 1 TB of data from the hack.
Update 2: Further details about NVIDIA's retaliation on the hackers has popped up and it would appear that NVIDIA managed to access and encrypt the data through its own VPN. This seems to have been possible due to the fact that it was a VM image of an NVIDIA system that was being used. In other words, NVIDIA didn't hack the hackers, but rather accessed a VM image of one of their own systems and encrypted the data on said VM. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, LAPSUS$ claims to have backups of the VM image and data.
Sources:
CRN, @vxunderground, @vxunderground
In a regulatory filing back in October 2021, NVIDIA seemingly warned its shareholders of a future attack on the company of some kind. NVIDIA claimed that it's hard to protect against attacks, as the attacks are getting more "prevalent and sophisticated". The filing went on to say "Our efforts to prevent and overcome these and similar challenges could increase our expenses and may not be successful. We may experience interruptions, delays, cessation of service and loss of existing or potential customers." Based on media reports, it's currently not known whether any data has been stolen or damaged and it appears that the attacker(s) haven't been identified.Update: According to vx-underground, it's a South American "extortion group" by the name LAPSUS$ that's behind the hack. Based on screenshots provided by vx-underground, NVIDIA has allegedly hacked LAPSUS$ back and encrypted the data that was stolen. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, it seems like LAPSUS$ had backups of the data. The group claims to be sitting on around 1 TB of data from the hack.
Update 2: Further details about NVIDIA's retaliation on the hackers has popped up and it would appear that NVIDIA managed to access and encrypt the data through its own VPN. This seems to have been possible due to the fact that it was a VM image of an NVIDIA system that was being used. In other words, NVIDIA didn't hack the hackers, but rather accessed a VM image of one of their own systems and encrypted the data on said VM. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, LAPSUS$ claims to have backups of the VM image and data.



64 Comments on NVIDIA has Allegedly Been Hacked, Internal Systems Compromised
Bad news: Apparently part of nVidia doesn't or didn't force encryption on devices attached to corporate, beginner mistakes.
Maybe the incoming money are linked to some very bad people, say terrorists or whatever, and then you need to explain it all. Only that you can't. Now you can only play someone else's game.
And that's the things you can explain to IRS and banks. Imagine if Bin Laden's cousin wires you a couple hundred thousand $? Well, or at least FBI says the money are from his account.
Now, someone wiring you that much money from an alleged 'most wanted' guy definately means business. What do?
Of course, we can always discuss whether the human ability to use and make tools for ever more complex purposes is a net benefit, and I would mostly say no. Though I think you're framing the question wrong: whether or not it's a net benefit for the individuals of our species is myopic; the question is whether it's a net benefit to the world. And that's a pretty clear-cut no.Fruitless? Not at all. I also don't like the nostalgia that often dominates these discussions (that hews far too close to reactionary thinking, romanticizations and idealizations of non-existent pasts, and ultimately fascism to me). But the discussions are highly useful and necessary, as we need to be able to question and think critically about the fundamental systems of our world. Framing technology as a "natural evolution" is deeply problematic. It looks like that because of its large-scale randomness and arbitrariness, but framing technological development as natural or inevitable is deeply, deeply flawed revisionist thinking, and only works logically if you start from the present state and write your history in reverse, narrativizing the random successes that have led to the current state while ignoring the wildly branching nature of this development, the myriad false starts and failures, and how any reasonable definition of merit (the equivalent to biological 'fitness' in the "technology as natural evolution" metaphor) is entirely divorced from the facts of which technologies succeeded and which didn't. Technological development has been deeply bound up in societal rules, norms, practices, power dynamics and economic realities as long as anything resembling a society has existed, and while the overall development can never be claimed to be planned (too many shifts, failures and unplanned events throughout history for that), it is nonetheless entirely contingent on human society. Framing it as "natural" is a rhetorical device that only serves to obscure the sociohistorical specificities that underpin and make possible these developments.
I do admit that a lot of stuff evolved because we got rid of religious belief that only God is allowed to make some things, but humanity as a whole always had that will to make tools to get further ahead. "Engineering" weither it's about making a pointy stick, a bow, or a centralised heating system has been a key component to our survival. Being smart is literally the only thing that we got for us.
I make a distinction between questioning how the world got to be like it is now, (I literally had to do that for my thesis on emotional recognition by an A.I, and the shit storm that it could start) and Trying to rework the past. I should have precised that, to be fair. "what if "scenario about the future are important, but when it's about the past it's an exercise that can be interesting to read, but can hardly make an impact on the now and future. Especially when in some case those exercise can look like a way to fantasize about a better outcome, instead of trying to deal with the current issues