Ransomware group claims attack on Nvidia’s computer systems

The group, known as Lapsus, leaked the credentials of the US chipmaker's employees and will soon release 1TB of stolen data

US chipmaker Nvidia said on Friday it was investigating an attack on its computer systems. Reuters

A ransomware group known as Lapsus has claimed responsibility for the attack on US chipmaker Nvidia’s computer systems.

The Lapsus ransomware group leaked the credentials of Nvidia employees and will soon release 1 terabyte of stolen data, according to DarkTracer, a darkweb criminal intelligence profiling investigation platform.

“LAPSUS ransomware gang leaked the credentials of NVIDIA employees. And announced that it would soon release 1TB of stolen data,” DarkTracer said in a tweet.

Governments and companies around the world are watching out for cyber attacks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nvidia, the most valuable publicly traded chipmaker in the US, said earlier on Friday it was investigating an attack on its computer systems.

The company took parts of its business offline for two days, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Nvidia’s email systems and developer tools are said to have suffered from outages over the past two days, after what is believed to have been a malicious network intrusion, the report said.

The intrusion “completely compromised” the company’s internal systems, The Telegraph added.

“Our business and commercial activities continue uninterrupted,” Nvidia said in the statement. “We are still working to evaluate the nature and scope of the event.”

The hacking group, also known as the Lapsus$ Group, is the gang behind Lapsus$ ransomware.

The websites of one of Portugal’s biggest newspapers and of a major broadcaster, both owned by the country’s largest media conglomerate Impresa, were down in January after being hit by the Lapsus$ Group.

The same group allegedly hacked Brazil’s health ministry website in December 2021, taking several systems down, including one with information about the national immunisation programme and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates.

At a market cap of about $600 billion, Silicon Valley-based Nvidia makes chips that are an essential component of the millions of personal computers used by gamers. The company also has a growing position in data centres, where its powerful processors help run artificial intelligence software.