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The hackers behind the Nvidia cyberattack have slapped a $1million price ticket on an alleged cryptomining limiter device.
Among the many terabyte of delicate information stolen from the computing large by LAPSUS$ was info that would assist some Ethereum miners double their productiveness.
Ethereum, the world’s second-biggest blockchain community, operates on the Proof-of-Work idea, the identical as Bitcoin. In layman’s phrases, meaning to acquire the Ether foreign money, one must “mine”, or have a pc do some cryptographic heavy lifting. That’s why state-of-the-art GPU models, similar to those Nvidia has on supply, have been promoting out like loopy, as they supply the most effective ROI.
Extra Nvidia woes
To discourage Bitcoin miners from swallowing up all the provide, and to permit different customers to get an opportunity of shopping for one of many newer models, Nvidia was pressured to restrict the hash fee on their gadgets, primarily making it unprofitable for miners to go for these GPUs.
Allegedly, the RTX 3000 GPU can solely work with some 50% capability, for Ethereum mining.
Now, LAPSUS$ says that it has constructed a device that may bypass Nvidia’s Lite Hash Fee limiter with out “flashing” or updating the firmware on the gadget.
“With out flashing = huge cash for any miner developer,” the group stated earlier this week.
Nonetheless there may be a couple of purpose why anybody contemplating acquiring this device ought to suppose twice. First, there’s no assure that it truly works, as LAPSUS$ didn’t present a proof of idea, or demo, to point out the device in follow.
Second, it might very nicely be a rip-off, or a approach to distribute malware (opens in new tab). It wouldn’t be the primary time individuals claimed to have cracked the hash fee limiter, solely to be uncovered as frauds.
Third, the Ethereum community is phasing out Proof-of-Work and shifting in direction of Proof-of-Stake, which might utterly get rid of the necessity for any mining (opens in new tab)on endpoints (opens in new tab), and thus, the necessity for any GPUs.
Whereas it’s laborious to find out the timeframe of the migration, it does elevate the query of the profitability of shopping for the device for $1 million.
By way of: PC Magazine (opens in new tab)
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