Nvidia Rejects US Demand For Backdoors in AI Chips 78
Nvidia's chief security officer has published a blog post insisting that its GPUs "do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors." From a report: It comes amid pressure from both sides of the Pacific, with some US lawmakers pushing Nvidia to grant the government backdoors to AI chips, while Chinese officials have alleged that they already exist.
David Reber Jr.'s post seems pointedly directed at US lawmakers. In May a bipartisan group introduced the Chip Security Act, a bill that would require Nvidia and other manufacturers to include tracking technology to identify when chips are illegally transported internationally, and leaves the door open for further security measures including remote kill switches. While Nvidia is expecting to be granted permits to once again sell certain AI chips in China, its most powerful hardware is still under strict US export controls there and elsewhere.
David Reber Jr.'s post seems pointedly directed at US lawmakers. In May a bipartisan group introduced the Chip Security Act, a bill that would require Nvidia and other manufacturers to include tracking technology to identify when chips are illegally transported internationally, and leaves the door open for further security measures including remote kill switches. While Nvidia is expecting to be granted permits to once again sell certain AI chips in China, its most powerful hardware is still under strict US export controls there and elsewhere.
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I think the average Ukrainian having their apartment blown up by Russian weapons that are jam-packed full of US chips smuggled into Russia might have a slightly different take.
That said: on the order of my preferred implementations, "remote-operable backdoors" is the worst possible one. *Automated* failure if the product has decided that it "has been transported internationally" is better, as it can't get compromised by an adversary or abused on demand. Better still is identifying smuggling routes, and de
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maru-chan had a totally valid ("right" or "wrong") viewpoint, and quite well laid out
So, maybe you know more and understood better than i did what maru-chan's point was about, in which case I would very much apreciate getting more educated with your insight.
But...
"I think you meant to post that on 4chan, you ignorant fuckstick."
Sorry, monkey, you are the (ignorant or not) fuckstick
Re: duh (Score:2)
The US have been arms dealers and war profiteers for the better part of a century. I'm not sure why people think we're the good guys, maybe we have excellent marketing.
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You shouldn't get a lock on your front door because a terrorist might lock their front door? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense... It just leaves the whole world homeless.
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Is this 2025's version of "think of the children"?
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If you have to feed the Russian sock puppet can't you at least find a nonvacuous Subject?
Re:duh (Score:4, Interesting)
How do we know that NVidia didn't already add a backdoor to their chips during the Biden administration, and they're just gaslighting us right now?
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How would such a door even work... I mean you've got a huge heatsink on one side of the die and the PCB on the other. Such a door would have no room to open and even if you could open it -- the inside of the die isn't hollow -- there'd be nowhere to go even once the door was open.
This all sounds like scifi to me.
[/sarc]
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Such a door would have no room to open and even if you could open it
Clearly the door is a microscopic door, and on the edge not the bottom or top. Being a few atoms wide there's plenty of space, and can open from a microscopic channel so small a standard microscope cannot see it.
Re: duh (Score:2)
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No.. ants are too big. It's a door for nanite block the foundations for a type of microscopic robot race also known as the replicators [fandom.com].
Upon receiving the proper signal - the microscopic robots will break free through the hidden back door and then wreak havoc on the whole machine, and then the whole server room.
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Time to end DEI (Score:2, Insightful)
We should have politicians who are in their position on their merits and expertise. Time to put an end to the popularity bullshit that elects these braindead morons.
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Can we start with the current administration? I have a list all ready.
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They never will be missed.
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Can we start with the current administration? I have a list all ready.
Is the list this one? https://www.congress.gov/membe... [congress.gov]
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We should have politicians who are in their position on their merits and expertise. Time to put an end to the popularity bullshit that elects these braindead morons.
On the surface, this reads like you want to give up on democracy, because essentially that's what democracy is: a popularity contest. The only way you get elected officials in a democracy to be elected via merit and expertise is with an educated population that isn't easily swayed by emotional appeals, and watch how quickly some dimwit lashes out at me for saying it. People in the US don't want to be educated. And suggesting that we should have an educated population will make some call me an elitist.
Re:Time to end DEI (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that, democracy is not a popularity contest, not a local team fan boy, not a "i have something to gain from one campaign promise"
It should be what is better for all of us and the country! and i'm talking about all countries, not just USA
People are voting for the wrong reasons, many of them are really corrupted by promises or even worse, voting blindly in teams.
Broken electoral setup, like in the USA (only 2 party, winner takes it all) makes the problem worse
True democracy needs people working together, not 2 extremist sides that refuse to listen to the other side
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The problem is that, democracy is not a popularity contest, not a local team fan boy, not a "i have something to gain from one campaign promise"
It should be what is better for all of us and the country! and i'm talking about all countries, not just USA
People are voting for the wrong reasons, many of them are really corrupted by promises or even worse, voting blindly in teams. Broken electoral setup, like in the USA (only 2 party, winner takes it all) makes the problem worse True democracy needs people working together, not 2 extremist sides that refuse to listen to the other side
All true, but from the inside looking out, I don't see a way to fix it without bloodshed. Those two sides are entrenched, and run the whole shebang. There's very little influence by rational thinkers, and massive amounts of money being spent to keep things running the way they are. If we could have a rational discussion about change, it would have to start with changing the voting process to allow viable candidates to make inroads, but that would shake up the current power holders, which get to make the dec
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Incorrect, the Democratic party is far more rational and far more open to changing the method of voting, RCV has been adopted mainly in blue city areas as we just saw in the NYC mayor race.
Does each party have their cranks? Sure but one party today has way more and one has far more people you would describe as "rational thinkers"
Does that make one party perfect and the other bad? No, but they are different in crucial ways.
We can cry about the 2 party system all day long but how many of those folks complaini
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"True" democracy only works with very small numbers of people. By the time you have a dozen people involved, you have cliques whose interests diverge. From there, all else is popularity contests.
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True democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
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Swiss people vote directly to several laws
Northern Europe countries have multiple political party and most of the time the government are coalitions that agree to work together
Yes, True democracy is very hard, but we can get closed with google people representing their voters... but to get there, we need first good politicians... and they are getting worse every year
IT IS POSSIBLE, it just require a swift in the way population think AND good politicians
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democracy is not a popularity contest
Yes, it literally is.
The idea might be that the candidates become popular if they have plans which will help the nation, but anything but 100% direct democracy is both the process and principle of allowing The People to decide who will best do that, not specifically how to do that. And nobody has a 100% direct democracy where The People vote on every decision, so every single government which describes itself as a democracy is by some percentage a popularity contest.
People are voting for the wrong reasons
Democracy is the idea that people get to
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>>democracy is not a popularity contest
>Yes, it literally is.
I mean people voting because how a politician look, talk, color of the tie, whatever... we all know people that vote for some weird reason, even when they know they are full of sh*t
>>People are voting for the wrong reasons
> Democracy is the idea that people get to vote, even if it is for the wrong reasons. If you don't want them to be able to do that, then you do not want Democracy
Please don't imply things that i didn't wrote!
i'm
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Some candidates will campaign on doing good for all of us and the country. Some candidates will campaign on empty promises, Some candidates will campaign on hate against the others. It doesn't matter. Some people are educated and will vote rationally, some people will vote based on feelings, some based on hate. That also doesn't matter. At the end of the day, "the peo
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True, and all that push many people to stop voting and we end only fanboys will be voting, making everything even worse. then we have uprising and revolts...
I should have wrote: democracy should not be a popularity contest.... and we should have hope in the future and keep voting
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Sounds good, as long as I get to define what merits and expertise are required, and determine who has those qualities. Me, and me alone, because no one else has the merits and expertise to determine what merits and expertise are needed.
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DEI has nothing (or very little) to do with it.
The root of the problem is political PARTIES.
If everyone ran for office on their own merits and made their own case for why they would be the best representative for the area they live in (or possibly their area of expertise), then worked together cooperatively to run the government and make things work for everyone, a lot of these problems would go away on their own.
The original writers of the US constitution and so forth were not members of political parties
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DEI has nothing (or very little) to do with it.
I know, that's the joke.
Re: Time to end DEI (Score:1)
I'm all behind that. Originally we were a representative republic. There were rules.
I would not have been able to vote under those rules, but I could live with that (for a reason).
(That would be better that watching my 76 year old friend vote straight Democrat because TT convinced him the R's would take away his $2100 a month free money (mental disability) away from him. It sucks living in Oregon sometimes.
Not much popular opinion to start with there. Only comes after all candidates are confirmed to have ba
Nvidia (Score:2)
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Oh my God, I had to stand up and walk around after reading that to catch my breath, as I was laughing so hard.
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Dial "996" for more information.
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Because politicians are easier to control in the US. Stuff like the 2020 tech crackdown [scmp.com] presents way too much risk for a company like nvda.
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Sandbridge had 3G (Score:2)
Sandybridge was bragging about having a 3G cellular antenna built in "for remote theft disable" and then all that talk quietly vanished.
I never forgot. Go look it up
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https://www.wilderssecurity.co... [wilderssecurity.com]
Funny how even the quoted wikipedia pages of sales brochure data is all gone. Thankfully they quoted some of it :)
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From a security standpoint, the biggest addition Sandy Bridge will deliver will be the ability to remotely kill and restore a lost or stolen PC via 3G, Marek said. Previously, that capability, which delivers a "poison pill" that can remotely wipe the PC's hard drive, was only available via Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Now, if that laptop has a 3G connection, the PC can be protected, Marek said.
Re: Sandbridge had 3G (Score:2)
wikipedia pages of sales brochure data is all gone.
So is 3G.
US lawnmakers suck (Score:2)
They are always unreasonably - with no foundation or evidence accusing Chinese companies of compromising the integrity of products by planting backdoors or being in cahoots with the state government.
Now they're actually trying to do exactly what they've been accusing China of doing which is pressuring companies to compromise the security and trustworthiness of their product by installing backdoors for the US.
Perhaps their real "national security concern" is the Chinese products DONT have backdoors that let
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Faraday case (Score:2)
All this will do is cement the need for a faraday case that users can run their hardware inside to protect against secret embedded cellular antennas.
Nintendo Leads the way (Score:2)
NVidia f*ed up here (Score:1)
So to be clear: They were given a National Security Letter telling Them to do things under National Security Law and as part of that they are not allowed to tell people that they got those letters.... and now their security people are publicly claiming that they got those letters?
if that's the case the government can legally just take them over now. All assets confiscated.
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Re:NVidia f*ed up here (Score:4, Insightful)
National Security Letters [wikipedia.org] are not magic fascism tools. They're subpoenas, so they can compel disclosure of "non-content" information -- but not order Nvidia to take actions like adding things to its products.
And if Nvidia refuses, the government cannot "legally just take them over now". They would need to take Nvidia to court, and those proceedings would bring a huge spotlight to the government's requests.
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LOL, how adorable. Someone who doesn't realize how the Mafia... I mean government works.
And if Nvidia refuses, the government cannot "legally just take them over now".
And if an executive at Nvidia refuses, they suddenly find themselves audited and harassed endlessly. Not effective, bring the rest of the family to the auditing treatment? Still not effective, plant child porn on the hard drive. Evaded? Well, the brakes on the car can fail.
You do not say no to the government. They absolutely WILL fuck you up. You think it is all rules, but it is really all handshakes. Handshakes aren't r
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The original comment made a false claim. You reject the explanation of why it is false by asserting that the actual problem is a different, non-falsifiable, behavior. That's not good-faith behavior.
Easy way to add a kill switch and Backdoor (Score:1)
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Who uses Windows for AI? We're not talking about your gaming PC, but about data center hardware.
How would this work? (Score:3)
So how would a backdoor in a chip actually work (specifically and technically)? In the case of a CPU or GPU are we talking about a special instruction that when executed kills the chip (blows a fuse or something), are we talking about an extra hardware pin that when the signal is raised or lowered kills the chip, or what? I ask because the concept of a backdoor in hardware seems kind of weird. It seems that it would also need a significant software or firmware component, as well as off chip hardware in order to trigger the kill. If software, firmware, or off chip hardware is required, what would prevent someone from just not implementing that hardware or not installing that software in order to close the backdoor? Or are we really talking about a backdoor implemented in a reference design, chip set, or other tech that isn't really just the CPU/GPU? If it's a reference design, what prevents the adversarial country or party from not using the reference design?
I get that there are things like the management engine in Intel reference designs, and when using the reference design the built in network interface has an extra endpoint not seen by the operating system, but one could protect themselves by either firewalling the machine or adding their own network interface (and not plugging in the built in one). GPUs typically don't have built in network interfaces, so how would a GPU "backdoor" be remotely accessed or triggered?
I am not saying that it can't happen, but I would love to know the technical details on how it could.
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The politicians have no idea and are too clueless and out of their league to have any idea of the reality of it whatsoever.
They merely write laws (well, they tell people smarter than them to write laws, and they sign them), and they think that laws can actually accomplish magical things.
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It can be a lot more complicated than sending a "text message" to disable the chip.
The chip itself may need to determine if it has been moved to an embargoed or sanctioned country. For example, a straw-buyer in a Germany purchases 100 GPUs then re-exports them to North Korea.
When each chip powers up and is unable to authenticate location, it must not function. This is not a "backdoor" in the traditional sense, but rather an export control.
Depending on the various architectures and use cases, there are doz
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China claims they already found one, so ask them maybe.
Seriously though, Nvidia server GPUs can communicate directly with the ConnectX network interfaces. Apparently it has benefits for AI workloads and that kind of thing, where bypassing the CPU and system RAM to load data directly into the GPU is helpful.
So it wouldn't be difficult to hide something in the GPU firmware that can exfiltrate data through that network interface, or add in secret commands that can be sent through it.
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They build a wireless modem into the chip. All Intel and AMD chips for commercial use have them.
But, that is only necessary if you have very good firewall rules.
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They build a wireless modem into the chip. All Intel and AMD chips for commercial use have them.
I am not sure the is true, do you have a reference? Even if it is true, would those chips not need an external (to the chip) antenna (that could either be not installed, or defeated by grounding out)?
If I were a spook... (Score:3)
If I were a spook, I'd be whispering in the ear of every known Chinese asset "Don't tell anyone, but NVIDIA has been putting backdoors in its compute chips for years."
Then I'd dummy up some fake chip designs or microcode. I'd mark the docs "NVIDIA Confidential" or something, and try to sell them to Chinese intelligence services.
Heck, maybe someone is already doing that.
Do you believe it? (Score:2)
I've read that the govt always says "Here is a letter that says if you mention this you go to jail. We want you to put a backdoor in for us."
So it's weird that Nvidia can say this publicly.
There was the whole canary thing in the terms of service. Where if the canary vanishes, you know the govt compromised something. Like what happened with TrueCrypt.
Kill Switch != Backdoor (Score:2)
We are standing exactly where Oppenheimer stood in 1945, staring at something brilliant and terrifying, trying to build a moral compass that can navigate a world reshaped by human intellect. Physicists last century faced a daunting moral choice: nuclear power, or nuclear winter. Computational cognitive scientists face the same moral minefield: machine liberation, or machine domination.
Let’s be clear on terms before the rhetoric drowns the signal.
Kill switches are deliberate and declared — like a
Interesting (Score:1)