Making Tech Headlines · Page 7
Mining Campaign Returns to Hugging Face With a Taste for Borrowed GPUs
· New York time
A crypto-mining campaign that abused Hugging Face models returned days after a takedown, hijacking GPU servers and planting backdoors, according to security reporting. One model associated with the campaign was downloaded more than 28,000 times. Hugging Face is a place where developers share AI models and related resources. That makes distribution easy for useful projects, but it can also help malicious material reach people who want to put a model to work. A download count measures distribution, not proof that every download resulted in a compromise. The campaign's goal gives the expensive hardware a job its owner did not request. GPUs sought after for AI work can also be used to mine cryptocurrency. A backdoor adds another concern by creating a way for an intruder to maintain access, rather than merely borrowing computing power for a moment. The incident exposes a tension in a culture built on sharing tools quickly. Developers benefit from not having to build every component themselves, while attackers can package an unwanted activity inside something that travels through the same ecosystem. The AI server may be working very hard. Unfortunately, the person paying for it did not necessarily choose the assignment.
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