Nvidia Allegedly Hacks Hackers Who Stole Company's Data

Nvidia
Nvidia (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Nvidia yesterday launched an investigation into a hacker group that stole over 1TB of the chipmaker's data. Underground group, Vx-underground, has shared on its Twitter account that Nvidia has reportedly retaliated by sneaking back into the hacker's system and encrypting the stolen data.

LAPSU$, an extortion group in South America, had illegally tapped into Nvidia's mailing server and installed malware on the software distribution server. As a result, the hacker group purportedly extracted over 1TB of Nvidia's data. However, it's unknown what kind of data the hackers had stolen, whether Nvidia's or its clients' data. Nvidia's spokesman didn't share any details other than the company was looking into the breach.

It would seem that Nvidia has identified the attackers. According to the Vx-underground's Twitter post and backed by screenshots, the chipmaker has infected the perpetrators' system with ransomware and encrypted the stolen data in response to the attack. The group claimed that it had a backup of the data, though.

It's not Nvidia's first time to the rodeo, either. The chipmaker, along with a list of big-name corporations, including Intel, was victim to the SolarWinds hack back in 2020.

Nonetheless, it's not every day that you see companies take matters into their own hands as the majority of the victims hand the case over to the authorities. On the other hand, Nvidia was allegedly more proactive and launched a cyberattack on hackers. Unfortunately, if the group's claim to having a backup is valid, Nvidia's effort may have been in vain.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • jonathan1683
    Cool story hopefully it worked.
    Reply
  • King_V
    See, I'm thinking that if they're going to hack the people who hacked them, they should do more than just encrypt their own data.

    They should make it Really Freaking Hurt the hackers.
    Reply
  • dk382
    Am I the only one concerned about multi-billion dollar corporations having hackers on their teams who can immediately retaliate in such a manner? What are these corporate hackers doing when they aren't dealing with extortion groups?
    Reply
  • Migmag
    Good on them but technically its a crime that's punishable for both parties as hacking is hacking and illegal regardless.
    Reply
  • Exploding PSU
    Fighting fire with fire I see

    NVidia :
    The Way it's meant to be played
    Reply
  • King_V
    Migmag said:
    Good on them but technically its a crime that's punishable for both parties as hacking is hacking and illegal regardless.
    Are the initial hackers really going to alert the authorities and file a complaint?
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    I would expect them to have the data backed up, as they claimed, so that probably didn't accomplish much. I can't imagine an extortion group would go through the trouble of acquiring a terabyte of data, likely with plans to make millions of dollars off of it, yet not be able to afford a couple $50 backup drives.

    And we can't even be sure that Nvidia even was responsible for the retaliatory attack against the hackers. It was probably someone else. As the previous article stated...
    There are suspicions that Russian entities could be targeting U.S. and Western companies for sanctions imposed by their respective countries. In a somewhat interesting turn of events, hacking group Anonymous has apparently declared war against the Russian government.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Migmag said:
    Good on them but technically its a crime that's punishable for both parties as hacking is hacking and illegal regardless.

    Legal "self-help" is allowed in many cases. Encrypting your own data stolen from you by criminal actors is well within the bounds of legal principles. It's just like finding your stolen bike on the thief's porch and walking up and taking it back.
    Reply
  • spongiemaster
    dk382 said:
    Am I the only one concerned about multi-billion dollar corporations having hackers on their teams who can immediately retaliate in such a manner? What are these corporate hackers doing when they aren't dealing with extortion groups?
    Yes, you are. Any company of this size is going to have a cyber security team with the job of preventing attacks like these as well as securing their own software and hardware. Elite level hackers are going to be the best people to employ for such positions.
    Reply
  • escksu
    I am not sure how true is this story but I am really concerned about Nvidia having a hacking team...

    This means Nvidia could be hacking others or oculd be building backdoors in its own hardware.....
    Reply