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Support.2@XOTIC PC Company Representative
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insideBIGDATA Guide to Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning
White Papers > Featured White Paper > insideBIGDATA Guide to Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning
Artificial Intelligence is transforming the entire world of technology, but AI isn’t new. It has been around for decades, but AI technologies are only making headway now due to the proliferation of data and the investments being made in storage, compute and analytics technologies. Much of this progress is due to the ability of learning algorithms to spot patterns in larger and larger amounts of data. In this insideBIGDATA Guide to Artificial Intelligence, we provide an in depth look at AI and deep learning in terms of how it’s being used and what technological advances have made it possible.
Artificial Intelligence is an amazing tool set that is helping people create exciting applications and creating new ways to service customers, cure diseases, prevent security threats, and much more. Rapid progress continues to unlock more and more opportunities for enterprises and scientific research where AI can make a big impact. Many believe that the real world potential for AI is highly promising.
Speaking at a 2016 AI conference in London, Microsoft’s Chief Envisioning Officer, Dave Coplin observed “This technology will change how we relate to technology. It will change how we relate to each other. I would argue that it will even change how we perceive what it means to be human.” Apparently, the best is still to come.
This guide to artificial intelligence explains the difference between AI, machine learning and deep learning, and examine the intersection of AI and HPC. The guide includes a special section highlighting the results of a new insideBIGDATA audience survey to get readers thoughts about how they see AI, machine learning and deep learning for their own companies. The guide provides some of the survey results including numeric results, data visualization, and interpretation of the results. To learn more about AI and deep learning download this guide.
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Hope AMD finally can steal some $$$ from Ngreedia. AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 & 56 Could Come To Gaming Laptops, Company Hints
AMD Vega 10 “RX Vega 64 & RX Vega 56” Could Come To Gaming Laptops
"More exciting perhaps is the prospect of AMD’s high-end Vega 10 chip making it to the mobile market, something the company has confirmed is very much possible. In a video interview with PCGamesHardware.de, AMD’s Scott Wasson confirmed that Vega 10 can in fact go into a notebook, and hinted that an AMD partner may be working on such a notebook design"Raiderman, KY_BULLET, hmscott and 1 other person like this. -
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Papusan likes this.
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See also... Graphics Card Prices are on the Rise Again
"The easiest thing to do would point a finger at a high demand of graphics card due to mining, but with the current trend, that doesn't seem to be it, or simply isn't just that."
"The trend is even worse for AMD Radeon graphics cards, albeit there the shortage has been high overall for a long timeframe now, especially for Vega cards, of course. It remains unclear what precisely is invoking the prices to rise, perhaps it is ming, as Etherium still can be calculated well with a GPU."
I wonder if some will lose in the end when people start keep their hardware longer than before, due greed. The wished increased income can instead be turned to loss who will hurt. People have tried pee in your pants beforeLast edited: Jan 16, 2018 -
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Hmmm, I hope this is really true, but IDK how Nvidia plans to implement stopping Miners from getting Nvidia GPU's.
NVIDIA Asks Retailers To Stop Selling To Miners
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Raiderman likes this.
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Considering vendors can sell what they want for how much ever they want, to whoever they want in most countries - no such edict from Nvidia will have any effect whatsoever, I can't think of any other reason for Nvidia making this claim.
If Nvidia is sincere, they kinda remind me of the mouse in this cartoon:
Or are we the "mouse"?Last edited: Jan 21, 2018 -
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"The sudden surge of hundreds of thousands of cards in the used market reeks havoc on the market and instead of a severe supply shortage the balance tips to a huge surplus. To the point where the GPU manufacturer is unable to sell their inventory and in some cases have to write it off at a huge loss. Something AMD had to do back in 2014 after the crypto market crashed and used Radeon GPUs flooded the 2nd hand market."
See... Ngreedia + (AMD) just thinking about their own sick mother... Not on the Gamers or you!! Don't let you be fooled or tricked by Greedy GPU manufacturers. -
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, still an AI
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Last edited: Feb 5, 2018
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So, you can actually get a whole computer with the GPU you want, for the same or lower price than the GPU alone -
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NVIDIA Announces Q4 and Fiscal 2018 ResultsYechpowerup.com
NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) today reported record revenue for the fourth quarter ended January 28, 2018, of $2.91 billion, up 34 percent from $2.17 billion a year earlier, and up 10 percent from $2.64 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were a record $1.78, up 80 percent from $0.99 a year ago and up 34 percent from $1.33 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.72, also a record, up 52 percent from $1.13 a year earlier and up 29 percent from $1.33 in the previous quarter.
For fiscal 2018, revenue was a record $9.71 billion, up 41 percent from $6.91 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were a record $4.82, up 88 percent from $2.57 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $4.92, also a record, up 61 percent from $3.06 a year earlier. "We achieved another record quarter, capping an excellent year," said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. "In a powerful sign of our progress, attendees at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conferences reached 22,000, up tenfold in five years, as software developers working in AI, self-driving cars, and a broad range of other fields continued to discover the acceleration and money-saving benefits of our GPU computing platform.
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RUMOR: NVIDIA Ampere GA104 GPU Powering ‘GeForce GTX 2080’ and ‘GeForce GTX 2070’ Launching In April, Mass Production Has Begun And GP102 is EOL
It has begun folks. The leak season for NVIDIA’s upcoming Ampere architecture is officially open for business. Fresh from 3DCenter, a rumor which states that the next generation lineup for NVIDIA will be based not on Volta, but on the Ampere micro-architecture. Not only that, but if the rumor is to be believed then GP102 has already been transitioned to EOL (End of Life) and will be replaced with the GA series soon.
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Maybe the cryptominers will forgo buying further Pascal or Vega / Polaris GPU's now, and save their imaginary coins for spending on Ampere?
We can only hope that those greedy bastards buying up all the GPU's will stop ruining gaming and will move off to some other time wasting futile pursuits, like summoning Leprechaun's to take them to their imaginary pots of gold.
You're a greedy bastard if you have more than 1 GPU per computer burning valuable natural resources for the futile pursuit of spinning gold.
If you only have 1 GPU / CPU per computer enlisted in the pursuit of making something into nothing, that's just sad, where's your commitment to becoming a greedy bastard?? Stop wasting electricity and play some games!!Last edited: Feb 9, 2018KY_BULLET, Vasudev, Papusan and 1 other person like this. -
Aka They don't overcharge due the miners.
franzerich, Dr. AMK and hmscott like this. -
There are indeed thousands of suckers burning up their laptops on that crap. I've run into them years ago, running banks of them - during the CPU mining era.
These days I hear people mention they are going to pay off their new expensive laptop by mining 24/7, what a waste. They are forgoing the enjoyment of their new gaming laptop's, so they can earn some imaginary coins - to pay off their laptop.
Just enjoy your laptop's folks, it's a sad waste to burn them up on nothing.franzerich, Papusan and Dr. AMK like this. -
I will say that $9.71 billion revenue recorded is not from consumers GPU's market, this company is working with giant entities like NASA/SpaceX and Automobile industry and many others, leading the AI, Deep Learning and Machine learning all over the world. Consumers GPU industry is important, but it is not the one behind those bilions.
hmscott likes this. -
The Future of Autonomous Vehicles | Nvidia CEO Full Interview
If we gamers can't get reasonably priced GPU's, back to the MSRP, mining isn't just going to kill gaming, it's going to kill the core engine of innovation at Nvidia.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
Nvidia needs to figure out a simple solution to save their core business from disappearing. Use their Evil Empire firmware locking skillz to thwart miner's taking gamer's GPU's!!!!
Make GPU's for gamers that run at a 2x loss on mining - 2x as slow and 2x more electricity used when it detects mining.
Hell, make it 100x worse if you have to, to keep the miners away.
Crypto-developers might finally figure out that those crypto puzzles are a worthless burning of resources and come up with a coin that doesn't use them, and only needs 1/100 the time or power to accomplish the core needs. The new gamer GPU's need to detect this and stop them the same as the current crypto coin resource hogs.
Make a ton of these Gaming GPU's so that gamers never have to want for a fairly priced GPU. Fill the shelves with Gaming GPU's and never let them go out of stock. Get so many built that the price drops to below MSRP quickly after new GPU technology is released so that those in need can afford gaming, even if on last generation GPU technology.
The GPU's that allow mining would be exactly like the gaming GPU's. In fact they could be used for gaming the same as the gaming GPU's after the miner comes to their senses and needs to sell them. But, only these GPU's have what it takes to allow mining.
Mining capable GPU's would sell for 2x MSRP at a minimum, so that no gamer would mistakenly buy them, and Nvidia should only make enough of them each year to match the growth of Green Energy Resources so that miners can't continue to suck the oil / coal / gas out of the ground.
Design the mining GPU's to keep track of hours run, power burned, and make miners license and register them to a specific person that will be responsible in the future to pay back their resource wastage.
Also, the GPU should "pop up a big red flag" that shows it's spent when it comes to the engineered mining EOL, so that unsuspecting buyers won't get stuck with burned out GPU's. Maybe have a red die pack built in that goes off when it hits EOL.
If you think these suggestions are too extreme, you haven't been paying attention to the vast waste of human and natural resources used building cryptocurrencies infrastructure over the last ~20 years.
If miners are too greedy to stop on their own common sense, and are willing to pay as much as they have been for their lunacy, then give them what they want so they stay away from our gaming GPU's!!Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
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There should be state and federal laws enacted to require registration and licensing of GPU and ASIC mining devices, and special Electricity Billing Tiers for them to pay natural resource "wastage" charges.
The electric company should be able to detect these power wasters easily, register them and their mining operations, and then charge them 10x for their power usage over what's normal usage, 20x during peak usage time.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
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Maybe we can see increased prices (+ empty shelves) on next gen processors as well due the crypto-currency mining craze? All we get from this is Overpriced, Gpu, Cpu, Memory and ssd's from this mess...
After GPUs, CPUs May Become The Next Go-To Hardware For Use in Cryptomining – AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPUs Can Pay For Themselves in Under a Year
"With the provided insight, what AMD is saying is that with home mining on a Ryzen Threadripper, you can earn almost $90 US per month through the NiceHash platform and given the current price of the chip and electricity cost, you can pay for the chip in less than a year."
And of course, Samsung want it's share...
Samsung Enters Volume Production of a Killer Crypto-mining ASIC
"One of the world's largest SoC, DRAM, and NAND flash makers, with its own semiconductor fabs, Samsung, is eyeing itself a large slice of the crypto-currency mining craze. The company reportedly entered volume production of a highly efficient crypto-currency mining ASIC, for an unnamed client from China. The client has placed a gargantuan order for crypto-coin mining ASICs contract-manufactured by Samsung, which appears to be targeted at Bitcoin, for now."
IT WILL BE WORSE BEFORE IT WILL BE BETTER!! -
It would be cheaper, and easier to modify to new algorithm's, and if done right with VM's running dedicated to each CPU, it could be used for other actually useful purposes.
And, the ThreadRipper CPU array's with VM miners might even be profitable to run when mining operations are charged 10x-20x more for their "wastage" power usage by the newly enlightened power companies.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
Is It Safe to Buy Used GPUs From Cryptocurrency Miners?-Howtogeek.com
That being said, if cryptocurrency markets continue to bust as they have in the early part of this year, there are going to be some really fantastic deals to be had for anyone looking for a new GPU. It’s possible that the secondary market could get so flooded that even new cards go under their recommended retail prices for the first time in a long time. After a bleak few months of hardware shortages, it’ll be a welcome change for PC gamers everywhere. -
There needs to be a ground swell of awareness in the gaming community to not support mining in any way.
It's them or us, really they only care about the money, so do your part by not giving them your money. They'll just waste it on spinning more imaginary gold.
If you do buy a GPU from a miner, give them a copy of this book, maybe they will read it and wake up:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds: All Volumes - Complete and Unabridged Paperback – Unabridged, November 1, 2016
by Charles Mackay (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1539849589
" Charles MacKay's groundbreaking examination of a staggering variety of popular delusions, crazes and mass follies is presented here in full with no abridgements. "
"The text concentrates on a wide variety of phenomena which had occurred over the centuries prior to this book's publication in 1841. Mackay begins by examining various economic bubbles, such as the infamous Tulipomania - wherein Dutch tulips rocketed in value amid claims they could be substituted for actual currency - and various follies spread by word of mouth in urban areas.
As we progress further, the scope of the book broadens into several more exotic fields of mass self-deception. Mackay turns his attention to the witch hunts of the 17th and 18th centuries, the practice of alchemy, the phenomena of haunted houses, the vast and varied practices of fortune telling and the search for the philosopher's stone, to name but a handful of subjects. Informed by personal research, and exhaustive in detail, it is with an evocative conviction that the author excoriates mankind's numerous delusions.
Further examples of topics in this lengthy book include various claims concerning old relics and artefacts, often involving such items being said to possess religious significance. Mackay saves particular scorn for popular romanticism surrounding the lives of certain criminal scoundrels, whereby said wrongdoers are thought virtuous in popular society; he also notes the marked emergence of quack medicine concurrent with meaningful advances in medical science. The acceptance into society of these phenomena is considered but another facet of the human crowd's inherent madness, feeding into the central thesis of this book.
Charles Mackay was a journalist used to writing for a popular audience; as such, his book is highly readable and accessible even today. Despite his dogged research and dislike of various delusions, Mackay was not himself immune to participating in them himself; he was involved in the 1840s Railway Mania, and supplemented his interest with newspaper columns in which he assured readers that there was no danger of the railway market crashing.
Today, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds is distinguished as an expansive, well-researched and somewhat eccentric work of social history."Last edited: Feb 9, 2018Dr. AMK likes this. -
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Sure Nvidia could charge lower prices, they aren't hurting for money, giving back to the gamers that built it's core value Nvidia would be giving a big thank you to gamers. Even if Nvidia just started charging what AMD charges for the same performance that would be nice.
AMD released the RX580 4GB at $199, and that's really all anyone needs to game at 1080p at usable frame rates.
Could AMD sell that RX480 for $100? I don't know what the BOM costs are, but I'm sure AMD has some additional engineering and general sunk costs to cover. Plus AMD GPU department needs building up like Nvidia has been able to do over the last 20 years.
I'd say don't buy any mining GPU's, but there are people that could use a gaming capable GPU for $25 - $50, so I'd say that's the max gamers should pay for a dried up sucked out 24/7 eviscerated used GPU, like those miners are offering on the used market.
Generally miners run them till they are just dried up husks, ready to drop and have zero value left for them, which really is next to zero value to a gamer.
So again, 1/10 MSRP should be the most we pay for a discarded GPU from a mining operation.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
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Making GPU's for miners that work for gaming and mining, and make GPU's for gamers that don't work for mining. It's an easy firmware lock-up that Nvidia is so good at doing.
Used GPU's from the current wastage by mining need to sit and gather dust, with no value to recoup - as they are worthless to gamers as reliable GPU's. $25-$50 maybe for those in need.
Otherwise the rest of us that can afford to buy the new gaming GPU's at a strictly maintained MSRP will help keep Nvidia's core business intact.
The miner's can get their "special firmware" mining capable GPU's at 2x MSRP of the gaming GPU versions - which won't be usable for mining.
Nvidia has already said that they won't support consumer GPU's in datacenter compute farms, so maybe that can be enforced in firmware as well.
Nvidia charges for professional GPU's with features not available in the gaming GPU's, it's time for Nvidia to make GPU's that work for mining and gaming, and GPU's that don't work for mining at all and only work for gaming.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018Dr. AMK likes this. -
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I enjoy PC gaming, but I am definitely not paying more than MSRP for a GPU.
Many of us already have more than adequate GPU / CPU hardware for PC gaming for a few years, so it won't affect us right away if the PC Gaming Hardware market dies.
There is still time for Nvidia / AMD to save it, which is what I am hoping will happen.
Who is getting into PC gaming at these hyper inflated GPU, memory, etc prices?? -
I've seen them, you can tell them apart from a used gamer GPU. The GPU looks dried out, literally. And no matter how much they put into cleaning them up, they are dull pitted and easily identified.
If you are about to complete a used GPU purchase, look at them closely before buying.
If the GPU is boxed up, take it out of the box, out of the anti-static bag, and the first thing you do is take a close sniff to get the smell of the card, you can smell the "burn" in them - really.
You can also tell miner's by checking their ad, and see how many times it appears over the months. I've been able to spot miner's GPU ad's easily on ebay and craigslist. Similarities maintain across ad's, look for them and they will stand out.
There are fewer gamers selling their cards, and their ad's are up and gone quickly, because the *miners* want those sweet fresh GPU's for their own. The miners have ad's up for long periods with short gaps, before re-posting again and again.
Given how poorly the miners GPU's are near EOL, I imagine most won't be presentable for sale. It's more of a warning to used GPU buyers to be aware that these people aren't going to represent these GPU's honestly, you are going to have to proactively figure it out on your own, and avoid getting stuck with one.
It's not a good time to buy used GPU's either.Last edited: Feb 9, 2018 -
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AMD is also ramping up GPU production:
AMD to Ramp up GPU Production, But RAM a Limiting Factor
by Ryan Smith on January 31, 2018 7:15 AM EST
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12380/amd-to-ramp-up-gpu-production-ram-a-limiting-factor
"One of the more tricky issues revolving around the GPU shortages of the past several months has been the matter of how to address the problem on the GPU supply side of matters. While the crux of the problem has been a massive shift in demand driven by a spike in cryptocurrency prices, demand has also not tapered off like many of us would have hoped. And while I hesitate to define the current situation as the new normal, if demand isn’t going to wane then bringing video card prices back down to reasonable levels is going to require a supply-side solution.
This of course sounds a lot easier than it actually is. Ignoring for the moment that GPU orders take months to process – there are a lot of steps in making a 16nm/14nm FinFET wafer – the bigger risk is that cryptocurrency-induced GPU demand is not stable. Ramping up GPU production means gambling that demand will stay high enough long enough to absorb the additional GPUs, and then not immediately contract and have the market flooded with used video cards. The latter being an important point that AMD got burnt on the last time this happened, when the collapse of the cryptocurrency-prices and the resulting demand for video cards resulted in the market becoming flooded with used Hawaii (290/390 series) cards.
Getting to the heart of matters then, in yesterday’s Q&A session for their Q4’2017 earnings call, an analyst asked AMD about the current GPU supply situation and whether AMD would be ramping up GPU production. The answer, much to my surprise, was yes. But with a catch.
Q: I just had a question on crypto, I mean if I look at the amount of hash compute being added to Ethereum in January I mean it's more than the whole of Q4, so we have seen a big start to the Q1. […] And is there any sort of acute shortages here, I man can your foundry partners do they have the capacity to support you with a ramp of GPUs at the moment and is there enough HBM2 DRAM to source as well?
A: Relative to just where we are in the market today, for sure the GPU channel is lower than we would like it to be, so we are ramping up our production. At this point we are not limited by silicon per se, so our foundry partners are supplying us, there are shortages in memory and I think that is true across the board, whether you are talking about GDDR5, or you’re talking about high bandwidth memory. We continue to work through that, with our memory partners and that will be certainly one of the key factors as we go through 2018.
So yes, AMD is ramping up GPU production. Which is a surprising move since they were burnt the last time they did this. At the same time however, while cryptocurrency demand has hit both major GPU manufacturers, AMD has been uniquely hit as they’re a smaller player less able to absorb rapid changes in demand, and, more importantly, their GPUs are better suited for the task. AMD’s tradition of offering more memory bandwidth and more raw FLOPS than NVIDIA at any competing price point, coupled with some meaningful architectural differences, means that their GPUs are in especially high demand by cryptocurrency miners.
But perhaps the more interesting point here isn’t that AMD is increasing their GPU production, but why they can only increase it by so much. According to the company, they’re actually RAM-limited. They can make more GPUs, but they don’t have enough RAM – be it GDDR5 or HBM2 – to equip all of the cards AMD and board partners would like to make.
This is an interesting revelation, as this is the first time memory shortages have been explicitly identified as an issue in this latest run-up. We’ve known that the memory market is extremely tight due to demand – with multiple manufacturers increasing their RAM prices and diverting GDDR5 production over to DDR4 – but only now is that catching up with video card production to the point that current GDDR5 production levels are no longer “enough”. Of course RAM of all types is still in high demand here at the start of 2018, so while memory manufacturers can reallocate some more production back to GDDR5, GPU and board vendors have to fight with both the server and mobile markets, both of which have their own booms in demand going on, and are willing to pay top dollar for the RAM they need.
In a sense the addition of cryptocurrency to the mix of computing workloads has created a perfect storm in an industry that was already dealing with RAM shortages. The RAM market is in the middle of a boom right now – part of its traditional boom/bust cycle – and while it will eventually abate as demand slips and more production gets built, for the moment cryptocurrency mining has just added yet more demand for RAM that isn’t there. Virtually all supply/demand problems can be solved through higher prices – at some point, someone has to give up – but given the trends we’ve seen so far, GPU users are probably the most likely to suffer, as traditionally the GPU market has been built on offering powerful processors paired with plenty of RAM for paltry prices. Put another way, even if the GPU supply situation were resolved tomorrow and there were infinite GPUs for all, RAM prices would be a bottleneck that kept video card prices from coming back down to MSRP.
With all that said, however, AMD’s brief response in their earnings call has been the only statement of substance they’ve made on the matter. So while the company is (thankfully) ramping up GPU production, they haven’t – and are unlikely to ever – disclose just how many more GPUs that is, or for that matter how much RAM they expect they and partners can get for those new GPUs. So while any additional production will at least help the current situation to some extent, I would caution against getting too hopeful about AMD’s ramp-up bringing the video card shortage to an end."
Then the rest of the GPU production they can gouge the miners 2x-10x.
If there aren't enough GPU's for the miners, let them wait, don't make individual PC Gamers looking to build gaming systems for them and their friends.
For every greedy miner with dozens or hundreds of GPU's, those greedy bastards are side-lining tens of thousands of individuals that just want 1 or 2 GPU's for their gaming rigs.
That just isn't right, and it's gotta stop. -
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Mining Monero on SCADA networks? Why can't you kids be normal and just DDoS
By Iain Thomson in San Francisco 8 Feb 2018 at 19:51
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/08/scada_hackers_cryptocurrencies/
"Updated: Infosec bods say they have uncovered what's thought to be the first case of a major industrial control system network infected with cryptocurrency-mining malware.
SCADA security outfit Radiflow claimed today it found the software nasty lurking in computer systems at a water treatment facility.
Several operational servers used to monitor and regulate critical water supplies were found to have been infected with code that secretly harvested Monero cyber-dosh and sent the coins over the internet to its masterminds, we're told.
The malicious software was, we're told, chewing up processor time, noisily shifting data over the network, and potentially exploiting the fact that industrial networks tend not to be running the latest security patches – typically because they oversee critical processes that cannot be interrupted or knocked out by bad updates.
In short, it's not particular great to see malicious code running that near important systems. Luckily, it was just mining Monero rather than anything more sinister.
"Cryptocurrency malware attacks involve extremely high CPU processing and network bandwidth consumption, which can threaten the stability and availability of the physical processes of a critical infrastructure operator," said Yehonatan Kfir, chief tech officer at Radiflow.
"PCs in an OT [operational technology] network run sensitive HMI [human-machine interface] and SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] applications that cannot get the latest Windows, antivirus and other important updates and will always be vulnerable to malware attacks."
The malware family caught on the water utility's equipment wasn't named, and it sounds relatively sophisticated – more than a JavaScript miner running on a webpage on someone's laptop. It used obfuscation techniques, we're told, such as shutting down any installed antivirus tools, and was designed to be stealthy to maximize its moneymaking before it could be discovered.
The software nasty was apparently spottedthanks to researchers noticing unusual spikes in HTTP connections to the outside world from the infiltrated hardware, and the computers trying to send data to servers already identified as malware command-and-control machines. The hidden miners have since been removed from the sewage plant's systems, it is claimed.
Currency mining infections are fast becoming the preferred method for online scumbags to make a fast buck. Even ransomware is losing ground to mining infections, thanks in part to people keeping better backups and antivirus tools becoming more effective at blocking extortionware.
There's no word on how the malware got onto the SCADA network in the first place. It was either placed there by a rogue employee, via an open hardware port, or possibly through a network service left open by a careless admin.
We've pinged Radiflow, based in New Jersey, USA, for more information – we'll let you know if they get back to us. ®
Updated to add
While the cause of the infection is still being investigated, Ilan Barda, Radiflow’s CEO, told The Register today the malware was probably installed after someone used a browser on a server to visit a website they shouldn't have. The nasty would have been accidentally downloaded and run, and it likely exploited network file shares to move through the utility company's computers, we're told. It sounds a lot like a variant of Adylkuzz.
The plant has not been named due to customer confidentiality agreements.
"What we see is that it got into one of the servers, and moved across to others using SMB vulnerabilities," he explained.
"The main problem with systems like this is that they aren't usually properly patched or running security software, so once you get in it's usually easy to infect other computers on the network."
The mining software, derived from Coinhive's code as usual, was running infected servers' CPUs at very high rates, apparently, and presumably reaping a lot of currency. A standard PC running Coinhive can typically pull in around 25 cents per day, but servers are more powerful and can churn out more crypto-cash.
UK ICO, USCourts.gov... Thousands of websites hijacked by hidden crypto-mining code after popular plugin hacked
Biz scrambles to shut down crafty coin crafting operation
By Chris Williams, Editor in Chief, 11 Feb 2018 at 15:41
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/11/browsealoud_compromised_coinhive/
"Thousands of websites around the world – from the UK's NHS and ICO to the US government's court system – were today secretly mining crypto-coins on netizens' web browsers for miscreants unknown.
The affected sites all use a fairly popular plugin called Browsealoud, made by Brit biz Texthelp, which reads out webpages for blind or partially sighted people.
This technology was compromised in some way – either by hackers or rogue insiders altering Browsealoud's source code – to silently inject Coinhive's Monero miner into every webpage offering Browsealoud.
For several hours today, anyone who visited a site that embedded Browsealoud inadvertently ran this hidden mining code on their computer, generating money for the miscreants behind the caper.
A list of 4,200-plus affected websites can be found here: they include The City University of New York (cuny.edu), Uncle Sam's court information portal (uscourts.gov), Lund University (lu.se), the UK's Student Loans Company (slc.co.uk), privacy watchdog The Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (financial-ombudsman.org.uk), plus a shedload of other .gov.uk and .gov.au sites, UK NHS services, and other organizations across the globe.
Manchester.gov.uk, NHSinform.scot, agriculture.gov.ie, Croydon.gov.uk, ouh.nhs.uk, legislation.qld.gov.au, the list goes on.
The Monero miner was added to Browsealoud's code some time between 0300 and 1145 UTC: here's a clean copy of its JavaScript, and the hacked version. Coinhive's code is mostly detected and stopped by antivirus packages and ad-blocking tools. The miner perishes when you close the browser tab, so if you have visited one of the affected sites, your computer shouldn't be infected: the code only runs while the tab is open.
Scrambled ... A portion of the obfuscated mining code injected via Browsealoud today
The injected mining code was obfuscated, but when converted from hexadecimal back to ASCII it spelled out the necessary magic to summon Coinhive's stealthy JavaScript miner to the page.
Defense mechanism
The malicious code was first spotted by UK-based infosec consultant Scott Helme, and confirmed by The Register. He recommended webmasters try a technique called SRI – Subresource Integrity – which catches and blocks attempts by hackers to inject malicious code into strangers' websites.
Just about every non-trivial website on the planet loads in resources provided by other companies and organizations – from fonts and menu interfaces to screen readers and translator tools. If any one of these outside resources is hacked or tampered with to perform malicious actions, such as mine crypto-coins, all the websites relying on that compromised resource will end up pulling the evil code onto their pages and into visitors' browsers.
SRI uses a fingerprinting approach to stop vandalized JavaScript from being imported into webpages. If an internet dirtbag changes a third-party provider's source code, the alteration is detected and blocked by the individual websites using this signature technique.
Until more websites use this protection mechanism, third-party resource providers – like Browsealoud – will be targeted by criminals to spread miners, or worse, on thousands of websites. A scumbag simply has to hack one provider to effectively infect countless other webpages.
"Third parties like this are absolutely a prime target and have been for some time," Helme told El Reg today. "There's a technology called SRI (Sub-Resource Integrity) designed to fix exactly this problem, and unfortunately it seems that none of the affected sites were using it."
A spokesperson for Texthelp told us as we were preparing to publish that it has removed its Browsealoud code from the web while it probes the security cockup, shutting down the illicit Monero-crafting operation.
"We are addressing this immediately," the biz said via Twitter. "Our Browsealoud service has been temporarily disabled whilst our engineering team investigates."
Luckily, the injected code was just trying to slyly mine Monero coins – one XMR is worth $238.65 or £172.56 right now – rather than anything more malevolent, such as popping up dodgy ads or tricking people into installing malware.
Texthelp's altered JavaScript was pulled offline by 1600 UTC today, we can confirm, meaning the affected websites are, for now, back to normal. The UK's ICO has also switched its website to a minimal "maintenance" mode as a precaution."
[/browser]Last edited: Feb 11, 2018alexhawker, Vasudev and Dr. AMK like this. -
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Huh smartest company? Let me tell you the reality of titan v for instance.
Pci sig announced openly that volta is a "AI" BASED card with plenty of tensor cores for processing, resulting in more capacity to process data, but you know, the titan v is just not running at its full capacity according to pci sig, reason isn't clockspeeds, but data bandwidth.
Originally volta was to be released and based on pcie gen 4, but here comes the green team, releasing volta at the time they shouldn't. Thats the reason what pcisig gave, the newer cards are having drastic performance gain at every generation, and can do much better with better data transfer iity, and hence even PCI SIG promised to double the bandwidth speed with every 2 years( coincidence, nvidia releases their new cards every 2 years, iguess not). -
Nvidia Thread
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Dr. AMK, Jul 4, 2017.