US energy officials have found unexplained communication equipment inside some Chinese-made inverter devices.

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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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  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    42•1 month ago

    Spain reconsiders possibility of hackers causing blackouts

    The possibility of the blackouts being caused by a cyberattack was immediately considered, though the grid operators in Spain and Portugal both said at the time there was no evidence of hacking, a point that was echoed by authorities and politicians.

    Now, reports suggest Spanish authorities are investigating whether smaller power generators were a weak link that was exploited by cyber criminals to target the electricity grid, according to the Financial Times …

    [The original FT article is behind a paywall.]

    • @[email protected]English
      41•1 month ago

      It doesnt have to be a “cyberattack” for it to be the fault of chinese inverters. There have been plenty of cases of faulty automatic firmware updates bricking all online inverters of a brand at the same time. Thats why you always cut those things off from the internet and set up your own monitoring.