China summons Nvidia over ‘backdoor tracking risks’ in H20 chips

China summons Nvidia over ‘backdoor safety risks’ in H20 chips but Nvidia denies its China-bound H20 AI chips have ‘backdoors’ after Beijing’s security concerns.

China’s cyberspace regulators on Thursday summoned Nvidia over security concerns that its H20 chips can be tracked and turned off remotely.

Chinese regulators demanded that the U.S. chip company provide explanations on “backdoor safety risks” of its H20 chips to be sold in China and submit relevant materials.

According to China’s Cyberspace Administration, Nvidia met with Beijing officials on Thursday regarding potential national security risks posed by its H20 graphics processing units.

Nvidia has denied that its chips have any “backdoors” that would allow anyone to access or control them, after Chinese regulators summoned officials from the company to explain risks associated with its H20 chip.

While Nvidia was given assurances by Washington that it would be allowed to resume exports of its made-for-China H20 general processing units, the AI chips have attracted increased scrutiny from Beijing.

“Cybersecurity is critically important to us. NVIDIA does not have ‘backdoors’ in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them,” a Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

Nvidia was requested “to clarify and submit relevant supporting documentation regarding security risks, including potential vulnerabilities and backdoors, associated with its H20 computing chips sold to China.”  

In a post, the regulator said that Nvidia’s AI chips have been reported to contain serious security vulnerabilities. It also noted calls from U.S. lawmakers for mandatory tracking features to be placed on advanced chip exports. 

American AI experts had already revealed that Nvidia’s computing chips pose mature “tracking and positioning” and “remote shutdown” technologies.

In May, Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton and a bipartisan group of eight representatives introduced the U.S. Chip Security Act that would require semiconductor companies like Nvidia to include security mechanisms and location verification in their advanced AI chips.

Democratic Representative Bill Foster, who was one of the co-leads of the act in the House, and independent technical experts told Reuters in May that the technology to track chips was readily available, with much of it already built into Nvidia’s chips.