Chinese “kill switches” have been found hidden in American solar farms, prompting calls for Ed Miliband to halt the rollout of renewables.
On Thursday, the Energy Secretary was urged to impose an “immediate pause” on his green energy blitz to review whether UK solar plants are also at risk.
The components found in the US included cellular radios capable of switching off the equipment remotely, raising serious concerns about grid security, according to Reuters.
They were found inside power inverters manufactured by unnamed Chinese companies.
Power inverters are the key links between solar or wind farms and the rest of the power system, converting their electricity so the wider grid can use it.
One source told Reuters that compromising such equipment would give Beijing the ability to inflict blackouts on the West, claiming it would create “a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”.
OP, I wish you would stop spreading rumors. As others have pointed out, there’s no real evidence these allegations are credible.
For more context, nearly all modern solar equipment and energy storage devices (like Tesla Powerwalls) come with cellular equipment for firmware updates and production monitoring when there isn’t a better connection available. It’s just how it’s done nowadays, it’s not inherentely nefarious.
Now for some critical thinking. What does China really gain from taking out PV power sources? Those power sources are only producing power less than half the time people need it. Wouldn’t it be better to attack the 24/7 baseload power producers like a gas powerplant? If you take out the PV that gas plant will compensate, just like it does when it’s cloudy. For this reason there’s little point to attacking the auxillary, intermittent power sources.
The “theory” is that they’d shut off multiple big solar farms during peak, to damage the grid. But it’s literally just propaganda.
The personal-use solar inverters that let you check power generation from your phone, let you turn them off from your phone as well. And some people and groups have tried to shift that narrative to “ermegerd remote killswitches in industrial scale inverters”. But those aren’t hooked up to the internet and they’re usually in grounded metal boxes. You can’t easily get an outside signal to them.
So… don’t connect the suspect inverters to the internet? It’s not like they have a magical sattelite link that can’t be blocked…
Not an option. They have to be connected to something, the grid has to be able to monitor and coordinate power plants of any kind remotely and for a solar power plant the inverters are where a lot of that logic happens. Obviously it’s not going to have a public IP accessible to the whole internet, it may not even be connecting across the public internet at all but at the very least there are data collection and monitoring networks woven throughout the entire country and there are all sorts of ways anyone with nation-state level resources, nevermind China who manufactures and supplies so much of the world’s technology, might gain access to them.
So connect it to LAN then for fucks sake, no need to put everything on the internet.
This is a certified journalism moment, making grand claims with nothing but hot air to back it up. Oh well, anything to complain about the Chinese.
Feel like this was the plot of Homefront Revolution
From the original Reuters article linked in another comment
“Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at.”
“Both (sources) declined to be named”
“The two people declined to name the Chinese manufacturers of the inverters and batteries with extra communication devices, nor say how many they had found in total.”
“The existence of the rogue devices has not previously been reported. The U.S. government has not publicly acknowledged the discoveries.”
And then we told them… gasp chuckle… that there was a Chinese kill-switch… churtle guffaw in the solar panels!
So now… heaving laugh-sigh they have to buy more… hiccup-laugh natural gas from the United States!
And it was also noted by other commenters that it’s likely a default chipset that is used rather than anything actually nefarious. Most people are unaware of how many regular devices contain disabled hardware because it’s cheaper to make one board and modify it than make a million custom ones for every cheap thing.
I suspect it is just the Emergency Rapid Shutdown, which all newer PV systems must incorporate.
Any other source than the telegraph?
“Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at.”
“Both (sources) declined to be named”
“The two people declined to name the Chinese manufacturers of the inverters and batteries with extra communication devices, nor say how many they had found in total.”
“The existence of the rogue devices has not previously been reported. The U.S. government has not publicly acknowledged the discoveries.”
I want to believe, but this is starting to sound like the SuperMicro motherboard panic from a couple years ago.
What was the super micro board panic? I have one of those :/
Almost all cars and products have call home features in them these days. Car companies are putting kill switches in to stop delinquent purchasers. The trick is to manage them rather than whinge about them. If you know they are there then manage the network and environment to limit the risk.
If you know they are there then manage the network and environment to limit the risk.
What’s being discussed here are undocumented network connections that were wired to the primary controls through a secondary data bus so that standard monitoring tools wouldn’t see the traffic.
Even if it isn’t malicious it’s terrible, no-good, shitty design work.
https://cybersecuritynews.com/u-s-officials-investigating-rogue-communication-devices/
Yeah, the one in my car was on the old AT&T GSM network. I’m pretty sure there’s no network left for it to talk to, but I’d still like to find the component and wrap it in aluminum foil. The car’s been paid off for 6 years, and OTA services cut off a couple years after that. There’s no legitimate (from my perspective) reason for anyone but me to be able to talk to my car.
They do realize America has hidden kill switches in Mircosoft products right?
Hopefully someone finds the kill switch for ads and flips it
Source on this?
Not that I don’t believe you, fuck Microsoft with an umbrella as far as I’m concerned, but that’s the kind of claim you want to support with a source
IT guy here, Microsoft has extensive remote management tools.
Lets look at Microsoft Intune
Intune/Autopilot - This is Microsoft’s device management portal, this allows IT admins to remotely manage Windows 10/11 computers, and includes the ability to remotely erase a computer. Autopilot is a way to assign computers to a company so that when you you boot the computer it will only allow the Windows installer to be logged on to using an account from the company that registered it.
It is even possible to set a bios password through Intune remotely.
Microsoft could easily trigger a wipe of any computer that is connected to their cloud, and then make sure it could only be logged on to by the person it is registered to.
They could also change the password/mfa settings, and lock the UEFI
Effectively locking you out of your computer.
This can all be done through existing Microsoft systems, and I expect that Microsoft either manage all private Windows 11 computers logged in with a Microsoft account in a special instance of Intune or a separate but similar system with similar capabillities.
Now, this means that Microsoft does have the tools to brick your computer for Windows use.
Oh well that makes it okay then.
I mean, yeah sure it’s fine.
I just didn’t expect it to be Chinese.
Americans when America/Europe does something bad: :3
Americans when any country in Asia/Africa does something bad (and is clearly a CIA phy-op with no evidence to prove it happened): >:c
Nobody in their same mind uses Microsoft software for anything more important than solitaire.
Meanwhile a lot of governments worldwide:
The majority*
I said “sane”…
It used on Royal Navy Aircraft carriers MOD have tried to deny this photographic evidence.
You mean like the UN chief prosecutor?
Microsoft, for example, cancelled Khan’s email address, forcing the prosecutor to move to Proton Mail, a Swiss email provider, ICC staffers said. His bank accounts in his home country of the U.K. have been blocked.
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.
That’s not a “hidden kill switch” that’s just blocking his account, that lemmy admins can ban your account doesn’t mean lemmy has a “hidden kill switch”.
I mean my point was less about hidden kill switches and more about that Microsoft is widely used by a lot of people, especially people in governance worldwide.
Also, it doesn’t need to be “hidden” to be a “kill switch.” Microsoft effectively flipped a kill switch at the behest of the US government, just not a hidden one.
America after doing Stuxnet: “hey that’s illegal!”
Just like the ones inside f-35?
Are there any interesting teardowns of a compromised inverter out there (that isn’t some horribly annoying talking head on youtube) ?
I’m calling shenanigans on the reports until they name some names.
I wouldn’t put it past any government to do such things, but drastic action like halting the rollout of solar demands some serious proof. I also wouldn’t put it past any government to just make stuff up to further their agenda.
In the case of this administration, Don’t Trust, Do Verify.
If you find such a tear down, I would love to know. But I think it wise to remain sceptical without solid proof.
I imagine 4G-enabled LiFePO₄ BMSs too. Unlike Li-Ion, the cells probablywon’t burst into flames when shorted, but a near-short circuit inside the BMS could heat it up enough to ignite it and things around it.
Hopefully this site is acceptable to the mods…
It is. Sorry for the run around, but rules is rules.
