The hackers responsible for an Nvidia data breach have finally made their demands, wanting the company to release open source GPU drivers.
Nvidia is notoriously opposed to open source drivers for its products. The issue is so well-known that it continues to be a problem in the Linux community, with some Linux distros specifically advertising themselves as being Nvidia-friendly by including the company’s official drivers, rather than the normal open source alternatives. The company has also angered some users by including measures to throttle its GPU performance when used for crypto mining.
On March 1, it was reported that Nvidia had launched a counter-hacking operation against the LAPSU$ group in an effort to encrypt roughly 1TB of stolen data, so it could not be used in a ransomware demand. It’s unclear how successful that operation was, since the group is now making its demands, according to Ars Technica, targeting both complaints against the company.
So, NVIDIA, the choice is yours! Either:
–Officially make current and all future drivers for all cards open source, while keeping the Verilog and chipset trade secrets… well, secret
OR
–Not make the drivers open source, making us release the entire silicon chip files so that everyone not only knows your driver’s secrets, but also your most closely-guarded trade secrets for graphics and computer chipsets too!
YOU HAVE UNTIL FRIDAY, YOU DECIDE!
Given that today is Friday, we won’t have long to wait to see how this demand plays out, but our money is on Nvidia refusing.
