The Xbox Series X is the collateral victim of a data theft that AMD was the victim of. The company confirmed that a hacker managed to get hold of the source code of several of its GPUs, including the Navi 10 and Navi 21 GPU as well as the Xbox Series X. The hacker is demanding a $100 million ransom.
AMD is not just Nvidia's challenger in the PC graphics card market. The company supplies the GPU for Sony and Microsoft consoles, including the Xbox Series X and PS5. AMD has just stated through a press release that a subset of its test files for several GPUs had been hacked.
The firm remained stingy in detail but the hacker behind the theft told the Website TorrentFreak that the stolen files included the source code of the GPU Navi 10 which equips the graphics cards of the Radeon RX 5700 series. Also affected are the Navi 21 GPU, which will be found at the heart of the brand's future RDNA 2 graphics cards, or the Xbox Series X'sArden GPU, the chip that delivers a gross power of 12 TFLOPS.
Compromising data for Xbox Series X?
In its press release, AMD states that it was contacted in December 2019 by "someone who claimed to have test files related to a subset of our current and future graphics products." Some of this data was recently published on Github before being deleted following a complaint from the brand. The latter is reassuring and minimizes the impact of this data leak which raises concerns about the security of the Xbox Series X.
"We are aware that the author holds additional files that have not been made public and believe that this stolen data does not compromise the competitiveness or security of our graphic products," the firm said. The Xbox Series X, whose release could be delayed due to coronavirus, would not be threatened, according to AMD. The hacker claims to have hacked the data last November on an unprotected server/computer.
"Later, I discovered the contents of the files. They were not properly protected or encrypted, which is sad added the perpetrator of the theft. According to him, the data is worth $100 million. He threatens to make them public if the ransom is not paid. And in all likelihood, AMD does not intend to give in to blackmail.
Source: TorrentFreak