Nvidia Hackers Are Selling Software to Bypass Ethereum Hashrate Limiter

The hacker group LAPSUS$, which claims to be responsible for a recent hack of chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) in which it stole 1 terabyte of internal information, said it is now selling software that can bypass the Ethereum Lite Hash Rate (LHR) limiter that Nvidia had implemented to prevent miners from competing with gamers for its graphics cards.

“We decided to help [the] mining and gaming community, we want Nvidia to push an update for all [GeoForce RTX 30-series] firmware that remove every lhr limitations,” the group said in its public Telegram chat. It noted that it has a customized version of a driver and firmware that could bypass the limiter.

For its part, Nvidia said in an emailed statement to CoinDesk that it became aware of a cybersecurity incident on Feb. 23 that affected its IT resources. In response, it hardened its network, engaged cybersecurity incident response experts and notified law enforcement.

“We are aware that the threat actor took employee credentials and some Nvidia proprietary information from our systems and has begun leaking it online,” a representative from Nvidia said.

Nvidia is working to analyze the breached information and doesn’t expect any disruption to its business, the company said.

Last year, Nvidia introduced "hashrate limiters" for its flagship GeForce GPUs to keep more products available for its core gamers. In a recent Wall Street conference, the chipmaker said that almost all of its Ampere-based products will incorporate a hashrate limiter to deter crypto miners from using them for mining.

To further keep its product lines separate, Nvidia also introduced a crypto-specific mining chip last year, called Cryptocurrency Mining Processors (CMP). Nvidia said its CMP-related revenue fell to $24 million in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 30, a 77% decline from $105 million in the previous quarter.