The actual meters are a weak point between home networks and smart grid infrastructure that will be exploited, experts warn The technology at the heart of the government’s plans to roll out smart meters to every home and small business in the country are fundamentally insecure and will be successfully attacked by hackers, according to researchers.
In the report - Smart Meter Security - clean technology analyst group Pike Research states that governments and industry have rushed to develop smart meter technology but have not considered all the security issues around the technology. “It would be naïve to think that smart meters will not be successfully attacked. They will be,” the report states. “In fact, smart meters represent a worst-case scenario in terms of security: the devices lack sufficient power to execute strong security software; they are placed in physically non- secure locations; and they are installed in volumes large enough that one or two may not be missed.”
Specifically, Pike believes that smart meters are an inherent weak point in the various networks which will ultimately form smart power grids, stated Pike industry analyst Bob Lockhart. “Smart meters are one of the weakest links in the smart grid security chain,” he said. “Home area networks, commercial building networks, and utility networks all perform well in terms of keeping data encrypted within their domains. However, these domains terminate at the smart meter, and the only way for data to pass from one network to the other is for the smart meter to decrypt the data from one side and re-encrypt it on the other. Consequently, the data are, for a short while, unencrypted on the meter and could be successfully eavesdropped.” ....eWeek Europe
