News Nvidia Hackers Threaten to Release Mining-Limiter Killer

watzupken

Reputable
Mar 16, 2020
1,007
507
6,070
Its ironic. The hackers think that by releasing the mining limiter, its is going to hurt Nvidia? In actual fact, it will go the other way boosting their sales instead.
 

bigdragon

Distinguished
Oct 19, 2011
1,107
547
20,160
I saw this coming back when LHR was announced. Surprised it took this long for Nvidia to get breached. Huge financial incentive to getting the implementation details and source of the LHR implementation. Rather rare and risky for a company to hack back, so there must be some seriously important data in there.
 

spongiemaster

Admirable
Dec 12, 2019
2,273
1,277
7,560
Why the group would ask Nvidia to lift the mining limiter by themselves when the group claims to be selling an unlocker of sorts for most of Nvidia's RTX 3000-series line-up is unclear, and could cast some doubts on the legitimacy of the claims.

Because they don't have the ability to remove the limiter. There are so many working parts for the LHR limiter, this group probably didn't get everything that's needed to actually disable it in existing cards.
 

bigdragon

Distinguished
Oct 19, 2011
1,107
547
20,160
I'm calling their bluff. Why ask them to remote it when they claim they can do it? And then what? Release it as malware with ransomware in it and make their money that way? HAHA
I'm not sure it's a bluff. The hackers likely have all the source and implementation detail they need to devise a way to beat LHR. They likely don't have developers skilled enough in creating a defeat mechanism. Bullying Nvidia into creating and releasing a defeat mechanism is easier than trying to recruit skilled developers or find a buyer for such sensitive information. Breaking into and siphoning out data from a company like Nvidia is a different skill set than graphics pipeline and hardware interface coding.
 

deV14nt

Distinguished
Dec 30, 2013
2
0
18,510
I don't think mining is going to shrivel up and die if etherium falls out of favor. There are dozens of coins, some of which are sometimes more profitable than ETH. Such as CFX right now. Today. That's just a myth going around tech journalism circles.
 

TJ Hooker

Titan
Ambassador
I don't think mining is going to shrivel up and die if etherium falls out of favor. There are dozens of coins, some of which are sometimes more profitable than ETH. Such as CFX right now. Today. That's just a myth going around tech journalism circles.
That's only because the amount of cards mining CFX is minuscule compared to the amount mining ETH. If/when ETH goes PoS, all the hashing power from ETH moving away from ETH would be enough to tank mining profitability for the other non-ASIC-mined coins out there, unless their price also goes way up at the same time.