[Cryptography] Gaslighting ~= power droop == side channel attack

[Henry Baker]

At 11:15 AM 11/29/2016, Home wrote:
>An "easy" way to swamp out almost all of the usage signal available to the meter would be to put a one or two horsepower motor between each phase and ground (assuming standard 240V 2 phase house wiring) and use an Arduino or Raspberry PI to randomly vary the load on the motor, using a cryptographically strong random number generator to vary both the load, and the interval between load changes.
>
>Besides the initial cost of the equipment, there is the cost of constantly using (roughly) 2 kw of electricity just running this device, which could be enough electricity to have other snoopy sorts (narcs) raiding your house on suspicion of growing pot in the basement, but it would keep the smart meter befuddled.

I was also thinking about 1950's/1960's computers, with their multi-KW motor/generator power supplies -- capable of powering a small home.  Ordinarily, these motor/generators might be available as cheap surplus items, gathering dust in the back of some warehouse, but I seem to recall that these power supplies were the least reliable portions of these early transistor computers.

I did love those wastebasket-sized electrolytic capacitors, tho.

Speaking of power droop:

Argonne National Labs used to temporarily consume some substantial fraction (10-50% ??) of all of the electrical power in Chicago for a few seconds at a time; every household could easily notice every time the accelerator kicked in.  I'm not sure what Argonne would have to do if keeping the operation of their accelerator needed to be kept secret.

BTW, pot is now legal in California, thanks to the Nov election; however, I don't know if you're now allowed to grow your own at home.