[Cryptography] Smart electricity meters can be dangerously insecure, warns expert

Adam Sampson ats at offog.org
Sun Jan 1 20:48:20 EST 2017


Peter Gutmann <pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz> writes:

> Adding heavy-duty power control circuitry capable of switching,
> potentially, three-phase power, or at the least several tens of amps
> (so thousands of kVA) of single-phase power, isn't going to happen.

This probably depends on where you are in the world. In the UK, we've
had "Economy 7" electricity meters available since the early 1980s that
can switch off-peak loads (e.g. electric storage heating) based on a
control signal transmitted over longwave radio. The traditional approach
was to use an external contactor for switching, but you can now get
integrated meters with everything in one box for domestic applications.

It's well-tested technology here, not terribly expensive, and absolutely
something that the UK specs for smart meters expect you to support. This
2011 document from the Smart Metering Design Group shows some of the
possible arrangements:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48149/2393-smart-metering-industrys-draft-tech.pdf

-- 
Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org>                         <http://offog.org/>


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