Lava uncovers banned Nvidia chips linked to China Telecom addresses

Israeli security firm Lava has identified 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips linked to IP addresses connected to China Telecom, the state-owned carrier. US export controls bar the sale of these chips to China on national security grounds.

The chips weren’t found through a raid or a customs seizure. Lava spotted them because someone left a monitoring dashboard open to the internet.

The findings were first reported by The Information on October 22, 2026.

How a monitoring tool gave the game away

Lava traced the chips through publicly exposed instances of Nvidia’s DCGM Exporter. This is a monitoring tool that operators use to keep tabs on their GPUs.

Many operators leave the tool unsecured, according to the research. Those exposed endpoints reveal what hardware is running behind them. In this case, the hardware included 32 B300 chips, and the associated IP addresses pointed back to China Telecom.

There is an important distinction worth keeping in view. Lava’s work links the chips to IP addresses connected to the carrier. That is a network association, and it is a different thing from confirming who physically owns the hardware or exactly where it sits.

The research describes the B300s and similar advanced GPUs as purportedly valued at over $100 million.

Lava’s earlier report set the stage

The China Telecom discovery builds on a broader study Lava released on October 9, 2026. Lava identified approximately 2,100 exposed DCGM Exporter hosts globally in that earlier work.

The same report flagged a vulnerability in Nvidia’s systems tracked as CVE-2026-47483. It carries a severity rating of 8.2, and Lava’s research indicated it could allow remote disruption of affected AI infrastructure.

The export control enforcement problem

The research points to evidence of rising prices for advanced AI chips on gray and black markets in China.

Lava’s discovery suggests that some of that hardware may be reaching networks tied to a major Chinese state enterprise. It also shows that detection can come from unexpected places, such as a security researcher scanning for misconfigured software.

What this means for Nvidia, operators and regulators

Nothing in Lava’s findings indicates Nvidia itself sold the chips into China.

For data center operators, if your GPU monitoring tool is reachable from the open internet, assume someone is cataloguing it. Locking down those endpoints and addressing CVE-2026-47483 are the obvious first steps.