FBI warns of Solar System Cyber Threat

[wpns]

Exactly

I'm not convinced you couldn't get control over enough geographically-similar inverters to be able to destabilize the grid, but that's a lot more work than just turning off a large percentage of the smart meters and then wiping the meter database. Imagine being the PoCo that bought into the 'you can connect/disconnect customers from the comfort of your office' when every single client calls with a power-failure and you no longer have the capabilities to turn them back on.

Don't think The Bad Ones haven't thought of this, and aren't trying to get backdoors into the systems they don't already control.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

I don't use a private VPN as many would associate the word VPN with, mine is just a secure encrypted connection from point a to point b it's also open source and free it's called zerotier if your interested I just flip a switch on whatever device I'm using IE phone/tablet/laptop and then I'm technically on my home network.

Edit: I should add you need a router that can enable a zerotier connection pfsense did not but opnsense/openwrt does.

 

[wpns]

I was talking to the second-tier tech support at SS the other day, and they appear to have a useful audit system for who made what changes when to each of their cloud-connected inverters, so that's somewhat encouraging.

 

[TechRider]

I was talking to the second-tier tech support at SS the other day, and they appear to have a useful audit system for who made what changes when to each of their cloud-connected inverters, so that's somewhat encouraging.

That's more of a prevention against insider threat/incompetence. If someone attacked their systems, got in and was able to send a shutdown till further notice type of command... That would be a bad day. Yay - I could live off grid, then you go down with the grid.

 

[DPC]

This morning my wife is angry because of the banking system issues due to the cyber outage.

I don't know why everything needs to be so interconnected.
The FBI warning about security issues with solar equipment highlights something.
WHY DOES IT NEED TO HAVE CONNECTIVITY in the first place?
These things should be options you need to OPT-IN too.
Most of us have computers and smart devices we could easily plug into our smart stuff if we needed to make an adjustment to it.
These are not things we need to have done automatically is it?

Not to say that everything more primitive is better thats hardly the case at all!
Three generators here I have posted photos of.
A very simply LK with no solid state devices at all.
Primitive and simple and inefficient ( about 25% of all electrical power it creates is used to drive its field into hard saturation in a brute force approach to voltage regulation... )
Chinese Generator with some electronics inside to provide some more features and better fuel efficiency.
Still pretty simple, some nice features but not smart.
The Honda inverter.
Computerized smart efficient and small
But at the cost of being almost incomprehensible to the owner to fix

But all three do exactly the same thing!
Turn gasoline into noise heat and smoke and make a little electricity on the side


The LK make me think of the scene in On the beach when the sailors marvel at the equipment that kept running when the people were gone

The reality of our modern age of connectivity is very different.
The Technology we depend on gets more and more complex to make our lives easier, but with less and less ability for us to comprehend.
Is it a trap or a god send?
I don't know how to answer that.
I know We can not and should not go backwards but forwards makes us only more and more vulnerable to the technology trap.

 

[wpns]

That's more of a prevention against insider threat/incompetence. If someone attacked their systems, got in and was able to send a shutdown till further notice type of command... That would be a bad day. Yay - I could live off grid, then you go down with the grid.

Yeah, once I'm stable I'll probably just block the internet from the inverters until I need help or firmware updates.

 

[wpns]

WHY DOES IT NEED TO HAVE CONNECTIVITY int he first place?

Because it's easy, and adds convenience. For $100 I can connect my inverter to the Cloud and monitor and control it from anywhere on the planet. I'd still be on the tech support call trying to figure out my first problem if SS hadn't had the ability to make changes remotely.

And yes, it's dangerous to do it blindly, but how many people have the skillset to recognize the issues, much less do something about them?

 

[DIYrich]

This morning my wife is angry because of the banking system issues due to the cyber outage.

I don't know why everything needs to be so interconnected.
The FBI warning about security issues with solar equipment highlights something.
WHY DOES IT NEED TO HAVE CONNECTIVITY in the first place?
These things should be options you need to OPT-IN too.

Miss your passbook savings accout?

 

[DPC]

IF shtf at one point in the future, the first plug getting disconnected is my internet connection.

In case of poison gas hold your breath too....

I have stuff thats not connected in any way I understand to the internet.
And yet somehow many of these things connect to other things and do stuff that sometimes surprises me.
My phone connects to my employers 4G network for automation.
No idea how but I get apple stuff happening and I don't even have a password.
All this happening with thousands of feet of rock over my head

 

[TechRider]

I've been thinking more and more about this and it comes back to something I heard at a conference once...

"Data is the new Oil."

Our data, no matter how small it seems to be, is valuable to certain people. We've lowered the cost of certain products so low that they don't make sense to manufacture without a way for the company to have an income stream. (At least this is what we're told.) They collect and sell our data as a way to offset. I know Roku is terrible about this. They make relatively cheap products but collect a TON of data. Of all the things I block on my network, the roku telemetry is the most chatty and aggressive. It's come out that GM is doing the same with with OnStar, collecting and sending data so they can monetize it. I've looked at AWS and other services, they aren't cheap. Something has to pay for all those services and I know I don't pay Sol-Ark a monthly fee.

 

[OzSolar]

In 2014 hackers used Target's HVAC control system as a backdoor to get the credit card data of 40 million customers.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272101928/u-s-hvac-firm-reportedly-linked-to-target-s-data-security-breach

 

[ThaiTaffy]

This morning my wife is angry because of the banking system issues due to the cyber outage.

I don't know why everything needs to be so interconnected.
The FBI warning about security issues with solar equipment highlights something.
WHY DOES IT NEED TO HAVE CONNECTIVITY in the first place?
These things should be options you need to OPT-IN too.
Most of us have computers and smart devices we could easily plug into our smart stuff if we needed to make an adjustment to it.
These are not things we need to have done automatically is it?

Not to say that everything more primitive is better thats hardly the case at all!
Three generators here I have posted photos of.
A very simply LK with no solid state devices at all.
Primitive and simple and inefficient ( about 25% of all electrical power it creates is used to drive its field into hard saturation in a brute force approach to voltage regulation... )
Chinese Generator with some electronics inside to provide some more features and better fuel efficiency.
Still pretty simple, some nice features but not smart.
The Honda inverter.
Computerized smart efficient and small
But at the cost of being almost incomprehensible to the owner to fix

But all three do exactly the same thing!
Turn gasoline into noise heat and smoke and make a little electricity on the side
View attachment 229706View attachment 229708View attachment 229709

The LK make me think of the scene in On the beach when the sailors marvel at the equipment that kept running when the people were gone

The reality of our modern age of connectivity is very different.
The Technology we depend on gets more and more complex to make our lives easier, but with less and less ability for us to comprehend.
Is it a trap or a god send?
I don't know how to answer that.
I know We can not and should not go backwards but forwards makes us only more and more vulnerable to the technology trap.

I have connectivity to almost everything in the house but...95%of it I've built myself and generally keep multiple spares/parts on hand, I could just buy products that do the same job or better but as you pointed out the repairability of those items make them more throw away.

I try to build/create everything me and my wife use around the farm but I retired very early and all I have is time on my hands so it seems the logical thing to do especially finding projects that increase said time.

I have too many projects in mind ATM from RPi lawnmowers to taking the farm off grid with solar but I'd eventually like to start building a LF inverter and have something repairable as thats a vital part of the puzzle and who knows what the future may bring if I want to keep having a comfortable easy life I feel dues must be paid so no one can take it from me.

 

[SomethingAppropriate]

zerotier

Yes, I'm using that for remote access to my ip cameras.

Zero tier works great.

 

[Danke]

Nothing In my rather large smart home/farm is connected to the internet(though I can access it anywhere in the world)

How?

 

[BarracudaBob]

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

I want remote viewing when I am away

 

[Murphyslaww]

Crowdstrike agent misbehaving.

Major Windows BSOD issue hits banks, airlines, and TV broadcasters

The issues have been linked to a CrowdStrike update.

www.theverge.com

ya, on a call with 300 hundred other people trying to remediate 17,000 servers...60 of my own. As are thousands of others, I'm sure.

 

[BarracudaBob]

Repair CrowdStrike’s blue screen of death:

1) Start Windows in Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment (Press the F4 key to enter Safe Mode; Press and hold the Windows Key and press the power button, then release both keys to enter Window RE)

2) Go to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory

3) Locate the file “C-00000291*.sys” and delete it

4) Restart your PC as usual

 

[ThaiTaffy]

How?

It's all on an isolated network that I can access via a VPN tunnel on my router. Best way to describe it is I have a router that has all my smart home items on it but not connected to the internet then I have another router that allows a single encrypted connection to said router.

 

[HighTechLab]

Or Mikrotik gear running RouterOS, properly configured (not with factory defaults).

YES!!!

I was a cheap ass and bought cheap security cameras for the office that likely have a backdoor, put them on their own vlan, ip filter blocking all traffic except to NVR, we are 100% microtik all the way for our ops. Only firewall exception on that vlan is for NTP to sync date/time.

There are ways to secure things and prevent from phoning home.

 

[Murphyslaww]

Repair CrowdStrike’s blue screen of death:

1) Start Windows in Safe Mode or Windows Recovery Environment (Press the F4 key to enter Safe Mode; Press and hold the Windows Key and press the power button, then release both keys to enter Window RE)

2) Go to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory

3) Locate the file “C-00000291*.sys” and delete it

4) Restart your PC as usual

Yeah, the problem is scaling the fix... cloud servers, multiple reboots work, but a lot of bare metal have to be remediated individually, even individual clusters from Vcenter/nutanix. Don't think Crowdstrike is going to be sponsoring F1 next year...

 

[ThaiTaffy]

YES!!!

I was a cheap ass and bought cheap security cameras for the office that likely have a backdoor, put them on their own vlan, ip filter blocking all traffic except to NVR, we are 100% microtik all the way for our ops. Only firewall exception on that vlan is for NTP to sync date/time.

There are ways to secure things and prevent from phoning home.

I've bought a few cheap cameras and smart home products in the past and literally seen people try to access them within 24 hours of plugging them in that's what started me on my journey of learning about network security.
It's all good and well when someone warns you of a back door like the op of this thread but it's a completely different matter when you actually witness it.

 

[v_green57]

Yeah, the problem is scaling the fix... cloud servers, multiple reboots work, but a lot of bare metal have to be remediated individually, even individual clusters from Vcenter/nutanix

Solution to (yet another) Windows Update borking things...

Don't use Windows.

(yeah, yeah, "Work makes me do it!" yada, yada)

I sympathize with those who are forced to use one of the buggiest blobs of code on the planet. I am not, so I don't.

My wife was very skeptical when we switched to Linux apx. 10 years ago. "It's different!"

Her skepticism went away as year after year it "just works", never coughing hairballs after updates and version upgrades. Or otherwise screwing up her day (and mine).

I realize that those of you running server farms are on a different level, and I sympathize. I remember "in the day" you got a better deal from GoDaddy for hosting on Linux rather than Windows Server whatever-version-it-was-at-the-time. Maybe because they didn't need to spend so much time screwing with Linux to keep it running.

 

[plympton]

Yes, I'm using that for remote access to my ip cameras.

Zero tier works great.

I used ngrok for a while as a reverse... something... when I only had cellular connectivity at my cabin - I couldn't use regular DDNS stuff.

I switched over to TailScale a while ago, and really like it - it has iPhone apps that automatically and transparently connect to your local net as if you were at home. Home Assistant has a plugin that you can configure to be an Exit Node - which, could be dangerous in case of a TailScale hack, of course.

Whack-a-mole.

 

[v_green57]

YES!!!

I was a cheap ass and bought cheap security cameras for the office that likely have a backdoor, put them on their own vlan, ip filter blocking all traffic except to NVR, we are 100% microtik all the way for our ops. Only firewall exception on that vlan is for NTP to sync date/time.

There are ways to secure things and prevent from phoning home.

And, bonus, MTik's basic "home" wireless routers (hAP lite) are less expensive than entry-level Netgears, etc.

 

[Brucey]

ya, on a call with 300 hundred other people trying to remediate 17,000 servers...60 of my own. As are thousands of others, I'm sure.

Dodged a bullet with fireye here.