FBI warns of Solar System Cyber Threat

If someone has a hard-on for you, ... they are likely going to get you. I can assure you nobody is camped on the transformer in your neighborhood playing around with frequencies and sub-carriers to grab your precious data. I've heard these Urban Legends, but I've never heard of anyone actually getting anything useful with a technique this bizarre. This is similar to the CPU cache scraping stuff, spectre/meltdown. It is possible in these 'broken' CPU's that you could write a program that ocassionally scrapes a handful completely random data from the relatively small CPU cache in a few clusters of machines that may or may not actually have anything you could use passing thru it. So if you can get on a machine shared with who knows who. If you can find a place to log it, and if you run the collector for a few mellinnia and you collect a few exabytes of data you may find a pattern that might be useful somewhere in there. Or you can drop some malicious USB sticks in the parking lot at a major facility, and own the place outright in 48 hours.

As long as we don't use crowdstrike and windows, we should be ok.

ksmithaz1 said:

If someone has a hard-on for you, ... they are likely going to get you. I can assure you nobody is camped on the transformer in your neighborhood playing around with frequencies and sub-carriers to grab your precious data. I've heard these Urban Legends, but I've never heard of anyone actually getting anything useful with a technique this bizarre. This is similar to the CPU cache scraping stuff, spectre/meltdown. It is possible in these 'broken' CPU's that you could write a program that ocassionally scrapes a handful completely random data from the relatively small CPU cache in a few clusters of machines that may or may not actually have anything you could use passing thru it. So if you can get on a machine shared with who knows who. If you can find a place to log it, and if you run the collector for a few mellinnia and you collect a few exabytes of data you may find a pattern that might be useful somewhere in there. Or you can drop some malicious USB sticks in the parking lot at a major facility, and own the place outright in 48 hours.

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Yep if someone wants to get in they will, I try to keep as secure as I can and make myself as small a target as I can. Aslong as I'm not easy pickings because of some major flaw in ISP routers or some cloud connected data breach I'm happy.

I bought some very cheap Chinese security cameras,
WIFI stuff.
I know they are not secure they are outside my home and not for anything important.
From time to time they move and its not my wife so I suspect the Chinese is watching my struggle committee meetings through and open window.
They are coming for me lol....

No but the cameras do move.
But they are there for intimidation purposes and have been good at keeping undesirables out of my yard

Buy cheap Chinese crap and or equipment full of cheap Chinese crap and one should expect these things.
BUT....
I have caught them looking in my widows no joke.

Password protection is probably not very good.
Hackers probably do scan for open ports on these sort of things and just randomly play with what ever devices they can find.
So I turn them off when I don't need them

DPC said:

Hackers probably do scan for open ports on these sort of things and just randomly play with what ever devices they can find.
So I turn them off when I don't need them

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You can think that, but I doubt it. At least nobody is "scanning ports" on reserved ipv4 addresses on your home network, unless your home wifi is compromised or something. Now if you have IPv6 it's somewhat more possible. Assuming we are talking PTV camera's, if they have a "web / cloud" console someone may have broken into your account. Or more likely . . . There is a software bug that causes the camera's to park in the direction you find them locked looking into a window. This also seems a little strange to have an outside PTZ that would be mounted such that it can see in a window, but . . .

PTZ camera's are really dumb for security. You need to have multiple fixed camera's that cover the needed area all at the same time. PTZ cams are good for web conferences, or remote industrial monitoring at a "lights-out" location or something like that. For security use enough fixed cams to cover the needed area. Any camera that moves can be watched and avoided.

wpns said:

Yeah, a VPN into 'home' lets you do everything, but of course it's only as good as your VPN's security, which is probably somewhat related to how much you paid for it.

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a vpn into "home" is self ran so it is free.
You can just use wireguard (stateless)

ScrotpusGobbleBottom said:

Teamviewer
Use it to log into a junk phone near the SA and log in via Bluetooth?

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don't use teamviewer, that's opening your stuff up to everything.
Run your own rustdesk server and use that instead. It'll also to point 2 point connections

ksmithaz1 said:

You can think that, but I doubt it. At least nobody is "scanning ports" on reserved ipv4 addresses on your home network, unless your home wifi is compromised or something. Now if you have IPv6 it's somewhat more possible. Assuming we are talking PTV camera's, if they have a "web / cloud" console someone may have broken into your account. Or more likely . . . There is a software bug that causes the camera's to park in the direction you find them locked looking into a window. This also seems a little strange to have an outside PTZ that would be mounted such that it can see in a window, but . . .

PTZ camera's are really dumb for security. You need to have multiple fixed camera's that cover the needed area all at the same time. PTZ cams are good for web conferences, or remote industrial monitoring at a "lights-out" location or something like that. For security use enough fixed cams to cover the needed area. Any camera that moves can be watched and avoided.

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Security cameras are amazing deterrents. I had a break-in of my shop which is 20ft from the house about 10 years ago. Lost about $10k in equipment. Nearly walked in on them the first time. They robbed me twice. Cops were like, yeah, this happens. I filled out paperwork, never saw the stuff again. I also put up small signs warning of cameras, but they are quite visible. I had some minor property damage a few years ago that was out of view, but thats all. I live in a rural area but there are known crack heads who are known to steal stuff as they want. The cameras seem to keep them away. The fact that I apparently walked in on them was really bad. They dropped stuff and fled. It was two or more people. Property one thing, but my life is a bit more important. I learned from the Sheriff Deputy that the thieves in the area were becoming very brazen. Gunfire in the area is common because its rural. I could have been shot and killed and not noticed for days. My wife was out of town. Crazy.

ksmithaz1 said:

seems a little strange to have an outside PTZ that would be mounted such that it can see in a window

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I have a shed and the camera is mounted on it so it can look down the driveway.
These cameras have some functions I do not use.
You can put a memory card in them and I have never been able to get that to work
They have a motion tracking option that makes them jerk around.

And my wife sometimes uses them to talk to me when I am working outside and don't have my phone on me

There's the one in question.
Its about 2 or 3 years old.
So far one 12v power supply has failed and it needs to have the power supply cycled now and then because it stops responding.
But its been fairly reliable.
Its singular purpose is to look down my driveway and discourage some guy from coming into my yard and creating problems.
Cheaper than a fence, and there is always something entertaining to captured and shared...

posted in error

I agree abut the security cameras. Our IT guys say there are pages on dark web that have links to many cameras for entertainment porpoises. I remember listening to the baby monitors with a scanner as a young "ham". They were open around 49.86 MHz, now one cared. Cameras are same thing with it. Wide open streaming.

Funny Commercial

BarracudaBob said:

The FBI recently put out a warning to renewable industry companies and users through a Private Industry Notification. Vulnerabilities in renewable energy technologies in solar panels’ inverters — a device that converts electricity from D.C. to A.C.

Just think of all the "back doors" they have in the software

Businesses and residents with solar panels have been warned about being vulnerable to cyber attacks.

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This is why you setup a separate VLAN for all this IoT stuff and setup firewall rules to separate your network from this BS.

I mark myself safe from this. I could care less what they do the the enphase stuff.

I also have several ways to power the house in an emer if needed. Including my F150 Powerboost with the 7.2kw gen. LOL

DPC said:

this happening with thousands of feet of rock over my head

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Your bunker is several thousand feet below grade .. and you still have connectivity?

For someone like me that is not current on all this where would you start to research what to do to improve your security?

CaliSunHarvester said:

Your bunker is several thousand feet below grade .. and you still have connectivity?

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HA HA HA.
I work in a mine.
Its doesn't get muck up the shaft any faster but my employer gets really stiff for security cameras and tracking technology.
Most of it doesn't do what you expect like smart phone or tablets and 4G network that you cant make a phone call on for security reasons.
A decade or two ago we had broad band over coax just like your local cable TV provider uses.
WE had leaky coax radio systems and MB+ networks that all seemed to be just fine for what we needed.

Now its fibre and LT4 and I don't get it

Cable for radiating LT4

DPC said:

For someone like me that is not current on all this where would you start to research what to do to improve your security?

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Start with your router, if its not yours and provided by your service provider then you have to assume you are open.

DPC said:

For someone like me that is not current on all this where would you start to research what to do to improve your security?

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Watch some videos like this to get the concepts of what's being done and why.

I have security cameras covering 360 degrees around my house but its not really there for "security" its there for entertainment more than anything.

It all started with a single camera for the heck of it under my carport.

One day a cop goes running thru my yard. Then a police car flies thru my yard out in the field I own. Turns out it was a huge on foot chase of a guy running from the cops with an epic take down with a bunch of cops that takes place out of the view of the carport camera. Hmmm that ticked me off since I didn't get to see the very thing that made for a big story in the local paper. Well that wasn't going to happen again. So I bought more cameras !

Then I started catching more happenings.

A crow decided attack my bmw x5's one day :


Was very helpful with the insurance company. Geico employees got a kick out of it.

Then a tree fell.


This next one is from the front door camera I had added of the same tree falling.



Then the lightning strike in that field I mentioned earlier.


Same lightning strike via the workshop camera I had added.



This could go on forever but you get the idea. They are handy for more than "security".

"Security cameras" are a broad category.

I would never buy these cloud cameras 90% of people are buying like Ring, Reolink, Blink, etc. Extremely insecure.

The amount of reports of these all being hacked and video feeds all available on the dark web and these company employees Watching these camera feeds is widespread and well known.

If you don't care if the feeds are accessible at a minimum I wouldn't plug them in without them being on a vlan locked down with internet access only.

Shit look up the lawsuit of the women that sued Ring because she found a $ex video of herself on the internet. It was revealed 2 Ring employees were watching it in their command center in Arizona of her having $ex, downloaded it and posted it online. She was awarded $4 million....

We only use true closed circuit commercial cameras that connect to an NVR. These POE camera streams are recording to physical hard drives, onsite in the NVR over a dedicated, seperate camera LAN all hardwired with CAT6. That camera network is not internet connected. I understand this is much harder to do for your average person as all this hardware is purchased from our distributor and most of it is not available through retail channels.

These NVRs have dual NICs. NIC2 connects to your dedicated camera network POE switch that all your cameras conenct to . NIC1 is connected to a CAMERA.VLAN with specific rules only giving access from a specific mgmt subnet or Wireguard subnet for remote viewing.

I have my house, my parents houses, and close friends and neighbors houses all setup this exact way with same camera systems. Just like we do at our commercial clients.

ohmboy said:

As long as we don't use crowdstrike and windows, we should be ok.

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Do solar panels use windows?

DIYrich said:

Do solar panels use windows?

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How would they let the sun in without them?

DIYrich said:

Do solar panels use windows?

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Don't think so but you can use windows as solar panels https://www.solarwindow.com/

42OhmsPA said:

How would they let the sun in without them?

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Touche

DPC said:

For someone like me that is not current on all this where would you start to research what to do to improve your security?

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First thing would be to burn your isp provided router(semi joking).
What are your needs?
How much are you willing to spend?
How far deep down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?
Those are the main questions you need to ask yourself

If your only talking about a small network and you just want something to give you a little more security Linksys do a wrt router range that you can load tomato, openwrt or ddwrt on this would likely give you better speeds more security and a silly amount of customisation without having to go full on network engineer with switches/access points and so on and they can be had for around the $100 mark though you would still need to set it up and configure it to your use case(not an easy UI) but there's also plenty of detailed guides on youtube.

kommando said:

Start with your router, if its not yours and provided by your service provider then you have to assume you are open.

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Yes and if you are using there default password on the sticker that is even worse. This is public info anyone can get your password.

Look up an pwnagotchi. I have two I built.

A basic pfsense setup would be a 1000 times better.