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Comment by Strom | Hacker News Reader

How would it be a thing? You don't even need a network card, much less a network connection, to use a GPU. I guess they could manufacture these in a way that requires online activation of the firmware, but that would be a big step in the wrong direction of consumer rights.

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Each and every second-hand buyer in the world would block nvidia in the firewall after that. You know you need to tighten the screws when your GPU is trying to phone home.

In that case, it can easily be swapped around: card won't run unless it can reach an online endpoint. E.g. to fetch some binary blob that must be loaded in firmware. Only handed out and signed when requester is known to be legit.

Not saying I'd like this, or that I endorse this, though.

Stallman was right

Printer manufacturers figured out how to make their customers lives miserable long after the sale. Also, see what FTDI did: https://hackaday.com/2014/10/22/watch-that-windows-update-ft...

The NVIDIA driver could refuse to function correctly on a GPU with a known-stolen serial number.

Two reasons why this won't work:

1) The GPU probably already comes with a driver CD that can't have this serial number marked as stolen.

2) Even if you use a downloaded driver, you can just use the last version that didn't contain the serial.

You'll be left out of future driver updates, but that is of no concern to miners.

A serial number is independent of the driver while the past drivers could have a network check.

Personally I wouldn't love if my drivers phoned home to get the serial numbers of stolen cards.

And yet I would bet they already do phone home and send shittons of information.

But to use that to self destroy if stoken or the like would likely generate way too much negative PR to nvidia and bring unwanted attention, so they wont.

I know for a fact my drivers do not phone home. The only GPU driver I've used for years is the one that comes in the linux kernel. It's open source, I haven't read all the code, but I know I could and I know the developers wouldn't be phoning home.

I'd bet a large number of linux users are in this situation since nouveau (nvidia), intel, and amdgpu drivers all exist in the linux kernel and work well.

I'd also bet that whoever buys this type of nuclear-powered graphics card does not plan to use a driver that will not allow 3D gaming or bitcoin mining.

At least in theory, Windows Update would be used to force an upgrade to the newest driver. Which in turn could implement serial number blocking.

My recent GPU did not come with any sort of CD. They expect you to get drivers from the internet.

Or instead of consumer rights taking a loss, the company that failed to protect its property does.

I'd argue that serial number checks would be the company protecting it's property. It would be far better if the company could rely on the state to protect its property.

I also really don't see activation lock as consumer rights taking a loss, thieves aren't consumers. Being able to brick hardware that thieves steal is a consumer protection. If EVGA started to block resale, that would be a completely different story, but I was happy to activation lock my stolen iPhone. Apple lets you resell, but if you steal a truck load of iPhones I doubt they would activate.

"I'd argue that serial number checks would be the company protecting it's property"

No, its the company compelling me to protect it's property at my expense using my CPU and my Internet connection without compensation or due process.

I mean doesn't Microsoft already phone home a unique GUID identifying the hardware in your computer that it ties Windows key activations to? And since Microsoft owns Canonical, probably in Ubuntu as well (on the defaults)?

Citation on how MS owns ubuntu ?

And what compensation would you think would be fair exactly?

Consumer rights haven't taken a loss because there is no consumer and no rights. Users have no right to use stolen property. The have rights when they legitimately acquire the product.

Even if its changed hands, its still illegal to purchase stolen property and the police will just take it from you without compensating you.

The loss is that DRM is added to a product, which means that even if you legally purchased it, you don't really own it.

You never "really owned" a TV because they were never open source. If the feature never activates, it never affects the user in any way and it may as well not exist. If it does activate wrongly, you have consumer law and protections to get your money back.

Easy. Gate critical API calls implemented in the hardware behind cryptographic signature verification. You sign the firmware using your private manufacturer's key. You validate with a public key burnt into the Silicon.

Nvidia already does this for things like DriveOS.

https://docs.nvidia.com/drive/drive-os-5.2.0.0L/drive-os/ind...

They apply the same type of gatekeeping to power management and reclocking in post-Maxwell GPU architectures. This is why the nouveau driver hasn't been able to maintain parity with the proprietary driver.

I can't quite remember the search engine contortions I did to home in on it the first time, but I think "Falcon high-security power-management reclocking firmware signature verification Maxwell 970 GPU driver" should get you in the right direction.

Basically, Nvidia cryptographically signs the firmware blob (digest), and I think uses asymmetric crypto implemented through a public key embedded in the silicon that can decrypt the firmware signature shipped with the driver for comparison by the Falcon microprocessor to gate access to what firmware code can gain access to the power management/reclocking API's that make modern gfx cards useful. I was doing some research on it at one point between jobs, but it's been a while. Long story short, if Nvidia doesn't bless your firmware, you can't get full use out of your card. Anti-competitive/anti-user as all hell, no network connection required, and you can technically still "use it" at a near useless base clock rate.

This practice is part of why there was all that controversy around that hash-rate limiter added to 3060/70 GPU firmware? A signed development version of the driver without the hash-rate limiter was leaked, meaning all the miners just used that as their driver to get full performance cryptocurrency mining on the cheaper cards.

This is why, God as my witness, I will do everything in my power to never support Nvidia as a company ever again, and I have become increasingly vigilant against other actors trying to sneakily push cryptography based anti-features elsewhere.

I was never interested in hardware at this level of gory detail before, but now that I've seen it it can't be unseen; and I must protect open computing for those who come after me.

> You don't even need a network card, much less a network connection

Well, NVidia could require these, and make your card phone home every X minutes.

Dear NVidia engineers and execs: Don't even think about it!

"NVidia could require these, and make your card phone home every X minutes."

You mean treat my entire computer as it's NVidia's property and make it do what it wants? I really hope that would be illegal.

My network socket isn't Apple's property, yet Apple phones home for every application I start.

It could be done if nvidia cooperated. It's basically impossible to use a nvidia gpu without the driver software which _is_ networked. Nvidia already added malware to their drivers before to stop mining so blocking some stolen cards would not be out of the question.

Nvidia drivers work just fine with no networking, I've used them so frequently.

The anti-mining technique that Nvidia uses depends on firmware modifications as well. Thus the firmware of these stolen GPUs must already support such a banlist.

You could in theory keep it fully offline but at some point you are likely to accidentally allow it network access or want to update the driver and if that happens, the card is bricked. It also makes the cards completely worthless on the second hand market.

> malware to their drivers before to stop mining so blocking some stolen cards would not be out of the question.

That's not how it works. Nvidia drivers don't phone home to prevent mining blocking. Totally different scenario.

They absolutely can though. The driver has the ability to connect to the internet and the company has shown that limiting hardware via software is something they do.

This is simply not true. It's a combo of BIOS/Firmware, the silicon and the driver. Stop spreading FUD unless you have a source to back it up.

https://twitter.com/bdelrizzo/status/1362619264423747590

https://old.reddit.com/r/gpumining/comments/pbgyi9/to_clear_...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/nvidia-will-add-anti...

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-lhr-lite-hash-rat...

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