Slashdot Mirror
Security Holes Found In "Smart" Meters
Hugh Pickens writes "In the US alone, more than 8 million smart meters, designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently and to measure power consumption in real time, have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly 60 million should be in place by 2020. Now the Associated Press reports that smart meters have security flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid, opening the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills, remotely turn someone else's power on and off, or even allow attackers to get into the utilities' computer networks to steal data or stage bigger attacks on the grid. Attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters — which can be situated outside of a home — and reprogramming them, or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc, a vendor-independent consultant that performs penetration tests and security risk assessments."
"Wright says that his firm found 'egregious' errors, such as flaws in the meters and the technologies that utilities use to manage data (PDF) from meters. For example, smart meters encrypt their data but the digital 'keys' needed to unlock the encryption are stored on data-routing equipment known as access points that many meters relay data to so stealing the keys lets an attacker eavesdrop on all communication between meters and that access point (PDF). 'Even though these protocols were designed recently, they exhibit security failures we've known about for the past 10 years,' says Wright."
...but there really should be a minimum security standard for infrastructure items like any city's power grid (or voting machines, or traffic systems, or water supplies, or any number of things you dont want folks monkeying with). Its really insane to hear about this considering how power stations and utilities are tightly regulated. It doesnt matter that the system is only open on the far end of the line because eventually someone will mess with it and show just why its a bad idea. Either make the system secure or dont make them so accessable.
Where do you see the government involved here? As far as I understood the article those meters are to be distributed by the utilities, and those (at least in California) are privately owned.
So I call that a cheap shot from someone who wants his prejudices confirmed.
Anyone found any similar useful hacks with them newfangled radio water meters?
My city put 'em in last year and this dude comes out to the house to install it and I'm like, "...so this let you drive past the house and pick up the meter reading without coming to the side of the house, right?" And the dude is like, "No. This radios your water usage directly to the central office every twelve hours."
Every twelve hours.
I know slashdot makes you paranoid, but this bothers me. I simply cannot imagine how it could be useful to monitoring this frequently when they still bill my usage monthly. Plus, any dude with access to the database can hack together an SQL query to find out which houses have a total water usage under a gallon over the past three days and know who's not home.
The trouble with "smart meters" and the "smart grid" is that it's too easy to put in excess functionality that can cause trouble. The ability to do remote firmware upgrades is an example. The ability of meters to communicate with each other is another.
The "smart grid" has way too much centralized control in it. All that's really needed is remote meter reading, plus some broadcast signals to indicate how scarce power is at the moment. The customer should have read-only access to their meter from their side of the meter. High-current appliances should be able to query the meter to find out if it's OK to draw heavy power right now. The power company should have no data path to appliances.
Incidentally, some "smart meters" support pre-paid service, where customers have to pay in advance and are turned off automatically when their pre-payment runs out. There's also wattage-limited service, where the power turns off if a maximum load is exceeded. This can be used for collection purposes; if you get behind on your electric bill, your consumption is limited. There's a whole new range of ways for screwing poor people going in. It's like "check cashing" stores.