February hasn't exactly been a bed of roses for Nvidia, as the company was forced to abandon its $40 billion bid to acquire Arm (which resulted in a $1.25 billion breakup fee). Today, we've learned that Nvidia is a potential victim of a ruthless cyber attack. According to reporting by The Telegraph, Nvidia's email systems and developer tools have been inaccessible for the past two days.
At this time, it is unclear whether the attack itself forced these internal systems offline or if Nvidia proactively terminated access to quell the threat. According to its sources within the company, Nvidia's internal systems were "completely compromised." Unfortunately, there are no additional concrete details on the extent of the cyber attack or whether Nvidia was the victim of ransomware. We also don't know if confidential information stored on Nvidia's servers was accessed during the reported intrusion.
For its part, an Nvidia spokesperson issued a brief statement confirming the report. "We are investigating an incident. We don't have any additional information to share at this time."
The timing of the Nvidia cyber attack has raised a few eyebrows considering the military action carried about by Russia in Ukraine. 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 [cyber] war against the Russian government.
Nvidia is a massive American chip company that currently has a market cap of nearly $600 billion compared to $200 billion and $192 billion for rivals AMD and Intel, respectively. Last week, the company announced its fiscal Q4 2022 earnings and reported record revenue of $7.64 billion (a 53 percent increase). In addition, its full-year revenue came in at $26 billion, a 61 percent increase.
The company is well-diversified, with products covering PC gaming, data center, artificial intelligence, supercomputing and general consumer markets (i.e., Shield TV). Nvidia also has contracts with the U.S. Military, aerospace, and automotive industries, broadening its reach within the United States and across the globe.
#Anonymous is currently involved in operations against the Russian Federation. Our operations are targeting the Russian government. There is an inevitability that the private sector will most likely be affected too. While this account cannot claim to speak for the whole (con)February 24, 2022
