NVIDIA Says No To Backdoors In Their Hardware

They Aren’t Mincing Words

NVIDIA has been in the news a lot lately, to the point even the non-technically inclined know the name well, if not the product names.  One reason they’ve been in the news is something NVIDIA would rather not be known for, which is backdoors in their hardware.   The Chinese government has already accused NVIDIA of having installed backdoors in their H20 cards, a claim NVIDIA vehemently denies.  Simultaneously, the US Government considering implementing the Chip Security Act which wants to force companies like NVIDIA to install hardware capable of location verification and an assessment of mechanisms to stop unauthorized use; popularly known as a kill switch.

NVIDIA will have none of that!

They deny the existence of any current backdoors in their hardware and spell out, in great detail why implementing one would be a horrific idea.  They provide historical examples of the problems hardcoded backdoors have created, the Clipper Chip being a perfect example. They also explain how remote wipes and find my phone type optional software features are very different from doing the same with hardware.  The software can be enabled or disabled by the user while hardware can’t, and newly discovered vulnerabilities can be patched, unlike with hardcoded backdoors.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, hopefully NVIDIA won’t have to dig into their war chest and take this to court but if they have to, they have a lot of money to defend their decision.