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
Don't be surprised if there was further compromised software distributed as a consequence of that.
The amount of BS in this statement is just staggering. Could have been written by a 10 yo.
It's unthinkable that NVIDIA don't have a backup of the data that was taken from them.
Oh well, only in the movies.
Personally, I think the world needs to slow down, and go back to mailing paper checks and nothing online, greed needs to take a backseat, Mother Earth can't take it anymore anyway, as the Great Pacific Plastic pouches can attest.
A shame humans refuse to change, and instead plow forth at full speed ahead regardless of the consequences.
Ban crypto/NFT's and move some systems back to a LAN or paper system (but not all, but majority, especially critical infrastructure)
True, the world would move a little slower, but the world worked this way just fine not that long ago.
My thoughts matter not, for humanity has already chosen its fate. Endwalker Planet Archives #7429
And this time can be extended when you are trying to investigate what exactly happened and why. Sometime restoring from the backup isn't even started right away. Especially in a situation like this, where it seems it isn't immediately affect their day to day business. If only nVidia could control that. The fact is nVidia could set the MSRP to $1, and the market prices wouldn't fall at all.
Clearly not using win-11 and defender/ microsoft security :laugh:
The solar winds had months inside the systems of many corporations and governments.
Very possibly they compromised other software that we know nothing about, yet.
Basically, he's implying that situations like these are inherent to how societies operate right now, and that if they are to change, compromise might be necessary. That SolarWinds happened is the very reason for the notion... he's questioning our relying on these systems for speed and convenience. That speed and convenience comes at the price of the occasional massive information security compromise. Not that these things can't happen with physical mediums, or that they are necessarily even superior. However, the speed of transmission is itself (along with the ability to connect remotely) an amplifying factor when it comes to exploiting these information systems. Everything just happens faster, and at greater scale, which makes it harder to control.
Truth be told, I don't know how that factors in from a practical standpoint and I'm not sure how a 'retooling' to 'the old ways' would even look. But as a philosophical criticism of how the world works, it makes perfect sense to me. Personally I think modern info tech is the gazongas. It's really cool, and it has brought a lot of good things in the world. But the person you quoted was getting at a more fundamental obstacle to using and implementing them, the issues there are only ever-evolving workarounds for.
It really goes further, suggesting this same mindset drives our reaction to climate change. It's getting tangential for me by then, but the connection is definitely there. It's easy to look at situations like this as being the cost of moving too fast, along with other things like the building of hungry empires, war, or consumer culture. Something that maybe predates the technology we use currently, but may still continue to show in the ways we concieve, adopt, and utilize new technology.
www.pcgamer.com/50-of-transactions-were-fraudulent-when-steam-accepted-bitcoin-for-payments-says-gabe-newell/
ALL HAIL, OUR LORD AND SAVIOR LORD GABEN!