Following the most recent hack of Nvidia GPUs, hackers start blackmailing the company
The most recent Nvidia GPU hack has increased GPU efficiency by 20-40% according to WuBlockchain. After the initial hack, criminals blackmailed the company, threatening to publicize the driver.
According to the report, the private driver that removes limitations from graphic cards allows increasing mining efficiency from 20 to 40%. Initially, the manufacturer limited the hashrate of each GPU piece before releasing them to the public.
LHR (Low Hash Rate) GPUs appeared in the market after the explosive increase in demand for GPU for cryptocurrency mining.
Following the initial hack, LAPSUS hacking group released a message with an offering to sell the customized driver that removes the LHR limitation put out by the manufacturer. According to the message, the driver will work for Nvidia’s RTX 3000 GPU series.
In 2021, Nvidia released a dedicated Crypto Mining processor which offered a significantly higher hashrate in February 2021. But despite the loud launch and high hopes for the products, the lack of updates and poor usability caused a decline in later sales. .
According to the Bitcoin and other PoW cryptocurrencies hashrate, miners are leaving the market due to a major drop in revenue. But while retail miners decide to leave the market, companies like Marathon increase their offerings by mining 3,197 Bitcoins in 2021 with 32,150 miners, holding approximately 8,956 Bitcoins as of Feb. 28, 2022.
LHR-Based GPU Miners Sold at Same Rates, Ethereum Hashrate Freewheels at All-Time Highs
Meanwhile, a week after Nvidia introduced Lite Hash Rate products, the company admitted to earning $155 million from crypto mining chips in the first quarter of 2021. At the time, Nvidia revealed that miners cryptocurrency had increased sales, but the company also explained that it was trying to deter miners from using specific products. A digital currency miner named Tim Tarshis told Kan that he owned 30 LHR RTX 3060 Nvidia GPUs and bought them because “everyone was flipping them.”
Tarshis further stated that LHR technology does not make GPUs cheaper, and he agreed that Lite Hash Rate products “did nothing” to discourage people from using these devices to mine digital assets. . “A lot of people, miners and scalpers, were still buying cards at the same rates as before,” Tarshis added.
Currently, Ethereum (ETH) is up over 95% YTD and the network hashrate has reached all-time highs this year. At the time of writing, the Ethereum hashrate is over 1 petahash per second (PH/s) or 1,038,957,431,086,586 hashes per second (H/s).
Until Ethereum moves from a proof-of-work (PoW) chain to a full proof-of-stake (PoS) model, it looks like miners will leverage any device they can use to reap profits. . If Nvidia’s LHR products are still producing ETH and other GPU-minable crypto assets, they will likely be used for these purposes.
