‘Rogue’ devices found in Chinese solar inverters raises cybersecurity alarm in Europe
‘Rogue’ devices found in Chinese solar inverters raises cybersecurity alarm in Europe
US energy officials have found unexplained communication equipment inside some Chinese-made inverter devices.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34531692
US energy officials have found unexplained communication equipment inside some Chinese-made inverter devices.
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Reuters reported the presence of undocumented and “rogue” communication devices in a number of Chinese-made solar inverters. These could potentially introduce unregulated and undocumented remote communication channels to the inverters, by which an actor could remotely bypass the cybersecurity firewalls that utility companies use to prevent direct communication back to China.
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(I hate it when a technical take makes me side with authoritarian propaganda, but well...)
There is zero technical information in that article, yet plenty of people jumping to politically-loaded conclusions. Reminds me of the time when there was a (totally legitimate imho) scare about Huawei backdoors but zero technical details about what was actually found.
So from what I understand, some inverters "phone home". A despicable habit of too many hardware in the industry, but the phrasing suggests without even confirming that it may be more nefarious than "mere" telemetry that plagues any connected device out there.
"Rogue device" suggests that it is additional hardware. They imply that the add connectivity channels that were not present in the device. Are we talking offline devices that were stealthily loaded with a 5G simcard or a Lora device waiting for a bricking code? It is implied but not stated, which makes me extremely suspicious.
If Chinese authorities can remotely brick solar inverters, it is a matter of national security to disclose the models and the modus operandi asap. It is irresponsible to not help us mitigate the potential of attack. Also, if there are "rogue devices" designed to sabotage your grid, that's international sabotage, that's state terrorism. It is important to state it if it is the case, instead of implying it.
“This is a serious issue that the industry needs to address, and it’s even more reason for Congress to maintain tax credits that are onshoring the production of inverters and the entire solar supply chain in the United States."
I suspect that this is the core reason actually. Don't get me wrong, manufacturing crucial equipment locally is definitely a good idea, but I suspect strongly that these accusation are just a way of dodging the embrassement that Chinese companies' market share is annoyingly high in a market that westerners were too slow to recognize as critical.
Are we talking offline devices that were stealthily loaded with a 5G simcard or a Lora device waiting for a bricking code?
To my understanding, they found undeclared communication interfaces. Something that shouldn't have been there according to specs, but was.
Investigating how those could be used to brick a device would take a bit longer.
This is an easy smear to make if no one can verify anything, because no product is mentioned.
Okay... And US equipment likely has the same backdoors for Trumps Gov. How about you guys make an affordable inverter and solar equipment that actually helps the green adoption rather than hindering it, without going full capitalism mode making everything as expensive as possible?
Strange how in NA any time we get a solar subsidy or grant for homeowners or anything like that suddenly the already 20x marked up equipment goes up in price the EXACT amount of the subsidy or grant 🙄
I think i'll just go with the Chinese equipment and rip out any networking antennas inside. None of this IOT stuff should be networked anyways unless its on a isolated vlan atleast.
"Our interviewee likened the prospect to Russia restricting gas supply to Europe after its invasion of Ukraine. “Probably 99% of people would have said ‘No, there’s no risk [of that happening].’ But it did. We saw it. And I see the same risk here.”"
Oh, look. Let us back up new lies with old ones. People are going to fall for it again, for sure.
I guess that security researchers will be taking apart a lot of inverters in the near future.
Then we'll know.
Considering previous incidents, e.g. the cyber-sabotage performed in Poland by a train repair company Newag to prevent third party repairs, this kind of matters should be taken seriously. Back doors and logic bombs have been done before, and will be regularly re-visited as soon as people forget about their risk.
