Nvidia: Cyber ​​attack of unknown scope, but the manufacturer fights back

Apparently, Nvidia has been the victim of a cyber attack. A group of hackers claims to have gained access to sensitive employee data and information. The objectives of the attack were initially unclear. However, after Nvidia is said to have turned the tables and encrypted the hackers’ data remotely, the hackers now want to release Nvidia’s information because they had previously backed it up.

At the end of last week he reported British Telegraphthat hackers had penetrated Nvidia’s corporate network. This caused failures in the mail and developer systems that lasted for two days. However, it was not yet clear if the data had been stolen or deleted.

Nvidia confirms an incident

An Nvidia spokesperson explained when asked by several means like Reuters: “We are investigating an incident. Our business and commercial activities continue without interruption. We are still working to assess the nature and scope of the event and currently do not have any additional information to share.”

There is no indication that the hacking is in any way related to the Ukraine conflict. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cyber warfare broke out in the digital world and an exchange of blows between Anonymous and Conti, the two well-known hacker groups. There were cyber attacks against targets in Ukraine, probably from the Russian side.

South American hacker group claims responsibility

The South American ransomware group “Lapsus$” is now known to be behind the Nvidia attack. Earlier in the year, these hackers carried out a ransomware attack on the websites of several media outlets in Portugal, rendering them unreachable.

Then Reports on Twitter Lapsus$ was able to penetrate Nvidia’s network and capture over 1TB of data. However, the group also reports that Nvidia responded and attacked the hackers’ systems.

Nvidia’s counterattack infuriates hackers

Access to Nvidia’s internal network requires a VPN channel with employee permission, which in turn requires a registered mobile device management (MDM) system. The hacking group connected to Nvidia through a virtual machine (VM) on one of its systems. However, Nvidia tracked down the attack, gained access to this virtual machine, and encrypted the data found there to make it unusable.

However, the hacker group claims that they had previously copied and backed up the obtained data. After Nvidia, for its part, removed the data from the hackers, the data will now be published. Lapsus$ had previously announced that it would gradually release around 1TB of data on “RTX GPUs and such” if Nvidia did not cooperate and pay up.

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