GPGPU viruses

[thilanliyan]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v...tion_for_Larrabee.html

 

[dguy6789]

Sounds like nonsense to me. Viruses 99.9% of the time affect software, not hardware. A virus attacking or using a GPU shouldn't be any more alarming than a virus using a CPU to execute.

 

[yusux]

What if you actually had a brain.

 

[v8envy]

There's no reason a virus couldn't do the exact same OS API calls as the "software overclocking" utilities to see if your GPU and CPU can run at 8 ghz and 4 volts, for example. This would be a different beast than a GPU virus.

There are also very, very few utilities to monitor what's actually running on a GPU vs the native OS. A GPU hosted virus could hide itself from scanning utilities, among other things. And it could be more cross-platform. And easier to get running on non-windows systems, since presumably the person causing rendering and GPU computations has permissions to touch various hardware bits.

Cool. It's amazing what clever people can come up with.

 

[thilanliyan]

nm

 

[DaveSimmons]

GPU code doesn't run on its own, it's controlled by a program running on the CPU.

A GPU 'virus' would still need to be run by a regular program and the infected GPU code would not be able to directly affect anything in the operating system.

So:
- the virus writer would need to convince idiots to download the GPU code and install it somehow
- the user or OS would need to run some CPU program that interacts with the GPU code, then that code would need to somehow trigger a buffer overrun or similar in the CPU code to get the CPU (not GPU) to run some virus code

... why not just target the CPU directly, like always?

 

[AmdInside]

Off topic but why not quote the original source?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v...tion_for_Larrabee.html

I really hate it when some websites are linked even though they are just the ones providing the real information. Give credit where credit is due. You end up rewarding the wrong person.

 

[Cogman]

BWHAHAHA!

Oh wait, this wasn't a post by the Onion..

Here's WHY a GPU virus is nothing to get worried about.

1. Its gone after a reboot, that's right, any sort of virus written for the GPU would be completely wiped at reboot, if not, it would have to be stored on the HD just like a regular virus, thus making it just as detectable as any other virus.
2. GPGPU's are non-standard. A virus for Nvidia cards won't run on AMD cards.
3. It still has to be execute by the OS, loaded into the GPU by the OS, and the GPU is still going to have to communicate with the OS again to do any sort of damage (Unless the virus only wants to put a bunny in the right corner of the screen). Either way, the virus MUST interact in the OS with every single step that it is doing. That makes the virus EXTREMELY OS dependent.
4. What do you gain from writing a GPU virus? It was harder to write then a regular virus... Yep, that's about it.

Whoever voiced this FUD needs to get a clue.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: AmdInside
Off topic but why not quote the original source?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/v...tion_for_Larrabee.html

Sorry I didn't see that.

 

[Genx87]

Wouldnt a GPU be pretty good at cracking passwords and encryption? Lots of fast local memory and huge parralelization?

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Genx87
Wouldnt a GPU be pretty good at cracking passwords and encryption? Lots of fast local memory and huge parralelization?

Still, the virus won't entirely reside on the GPU, rather it would execute code to run on the GPU.

Perhaps for a password cracking bot net, it might be useful, but if you have a virus on someones computer, why not just log the keys?

 

[Equ1n0x]

LOL Intel. If Intel actually had something that was even remotely capable of doing GPGPU, it might be a concern for them. LRB is a looong way off still, if ever, frankly, if the demo box they showed of it is any indication of where they are. ATI and NVidia have left them in the dust, so naturally they are going to make something bad out of it.