RTX 3060 Ether mining accidentally unlocked by Nvidia’s own update

A software update released by Nvidia accidentally bypassed the Ether Mining (ETH) block the company had placed on its own GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

A spokesman for Nvidia confirmed Tuesday that the latest driver update for 470.05 was falsely released with code intended only for Nvidia developers to use, which allowed the hash rate limiter to be removed.

“A developer driver accidentally inserted code for internal development that removes the hash rate limiter on the RTX 3060 in some configurations,” said an Nvidia spokesman, as reported by The Verge.

In February, Nvidia decided to deliberately compromise the ether mining effectiveness of its RTX 3060 series graphics cards to prevent a demand-driven shortage caused by Crypto Miner. A three-way handshake between hardware, software, and computer firmware should ensure that the card was recognized when it was being used to mine ether and cut its processing power in half from 50 MH / s to 25 MH / s.

The back door that could bypass the card’s hash rate limiter came from the software side and was released by Nvidia itself. The offensive beta update has since been fetched from the software company, but versions of it have already made it onto the internet.

Elsewhere, on March 16, Andreas Schilling of tech website HardwareLuxx tested reports that custom changes to a computer’s BIOS were required to bypass the hash rate limiter. After testing driver 470.05 with a custom and standard BIOS, Schilling confirmed that no special changes were required and that Nvidia’s driver had removed the hash rate limiter itself.

While the news only aggravates the plight of gamers waiting to update their graphics cards, Nvidia’s gaffe may not necessarily cause Ether Miners to eat up the next stash of GPU broadcasts. According to Hexus.net, the latest reports suggest that the affected driver can only unlock one RTX 3060 at a time, making it unsuitable for use in large mining farms, at least for the time being.

Initial rumors suggested that a custom modification had bypassed the RTX 3060’s hash rate limiter on March 10th, allowing Ether to be mined at full capacity. It was later revealed that the mod had not enabled the card to specifically mine ether, but had been manipulated to enable the mining of another GPU-degradable cryptocurrency, Ravencoin (RVN).

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