Showing posts with label NVIDIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NVIDIA. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

NVIDIA graphics card driver security bug

This one's a privacy violation bug in the graphics card driver as encountered by some university student when he tried to start up Diablo III on his computer. As he started the game, instead of the black screen, there was a screenshot of some adult site being displayed in the browser's private mode with some garbled graphics on the screen. That probably happened hours before launching the game or maybe the website itself could be something else that opened up automatically upon launching the game. This poses a big problem and what if you get caught with such stuffs opened unexpectedly without your consent like how will you explain that it is a security bug in the video card driver?
The truth is that the framebuffer from the web browser is still in the GPU memory and after launching the game, it makes use of that previous framebuffer like it transfer that framebuffer from one application to another. I don't know if the previous application like the web browser reopens again after being closed upon launching the game.
The student eventually wrote a program that erases the GPU memory once he's finished with it for a clean experience but normally, unlike the normal RAM in which you can clean up with some third-party software, it is not the same for VIDEO RAM. I don't know how did he write that program that allows you to erase some unknown garbage from the video RAM but it may look like a future opportunity for us.
NVIDIA has been already aware of this bug but they still have yet to fix it according to that student.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Windows RT devices to be delivered in October

Reaching RTM milestone for Windows 8 like this is something people cannot wait but even then, there are still glassy sort of icons seen on the desktop mode and that's not making the operating system fast enough. It's more like the whole operating system that fits well on the embedded systems like you can call it Windows CE 8 with all the modern features out there.
Today, there are newer  types of computers such as the ultra-thin notebooks, netbooks, desktop computers that are stored on one monitor screen, nettops which are quite rare and more Windows 7 tablets that are still sensitive to touch un-friendly interface. There will be newer graphics cards and sound cards coming in this year and certain graphics cards are quite anticipating to us such as the Tegra 3 series from NVIDIA which provide better gaming graphics while having newer CPUs and GPUs processors. The speed for tablets does not have to be 2Ghz and above and the tablets may spot better battery life.
Recently, there was a new Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 which is powered by Windows 8 while the original runs on Android. Can you work on Microsoft Office suite on that tablet like that with that freaking Office 15? Like I realized when using that new Office 15, there are still inaccuracies that you may need to keep using the stylus, mouse and keyboard when working on the office documents like that. Other software that tablet will run include Photoshop, TurboTax and more. There was a warning from Acer and various game companies indicating that the entire operating system is going to become a messy catastrophe to the technology in the future. At least, Windows Phone series is quite good enough to use, right, because everything seems to be simplified?
Other tablets include ASUS Tablet 600 as well as that freaking Microsoft Surface tablet. There were already large embedded computer devices on the table named Microsoft Surface but for that first-party tablet, you can call it Mini-Surface for sure. Speaking of ASUS, there will be a showcase from this year's ASUS Computex.
But that's not it after that blog post from Building Windows 8 official blog as there will be more tablet devices from the other computer manufacturers running Windows RT to be released after the release of Windows 8 and RT.