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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/driver-that-promised-faster-ethereum-mining-for-nvidia-gpus-is-full-of-viruses/ [arstechnica.com]

Both Nvidia and AMD have made changes to their gaming GPU lineups in an effort to make them less appealing to cryptocurrency miners, including releasing mining-specific GPU models [nvidia.com] and making entry-level GPUs with specs that aren't good enough for mining [arstechnica.com]. One of the most significant changes came in mid-2021, when Nvidia released "Lite Hash Rate" (LHR) versions of its RTX 3000-series GPUs [arstechnica.com] that halved their performance when mining Ethereum or similar coins but didn't affect their gaming performance.
[...]
a hacker by the name of Sergey released an "Nvidia RTX LHR v2 Unlocker" that promised to remove the hash-rate limits on most Nvidia cards using a combination of BIOS updates and specially modified drivers.

Surprising no one, the sketchy drivers with the too-good-to-be-true performance promises turned out to be full of viruses [tomshardware.com]. An extensive report [joesandbox.com] shows that the software package modifies Windows Powershell policies, deletes and creates new files in system directories, and causes abnormally high CPU usage, among other things.

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