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

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

From: Steve Furlong (mailto:demonfighter at gmail.com)
Reply: Steve Furlong (mailto:demonfighter at gmail.com)

> On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 8:10 AM, Wendy M. Grossman wrote:
> >
> > Ross Anderson has written a great deal about this. In his view, I
> > believe the biggest risk is that hackers can crash the grid by turning
> > the meters all off at once, from where it would take the Uk sevveral
> > weeks to recover.  
>  
> Do you have a cite for that last claim?

I can't help with that, but I have further hearsay evidence. A number of years ago, I spent a week working on some modeling problem related to the UK electrical grid, and an engineer I talked to at the time told me that nobody really knows how to restart the grid if it crashes. Or more precisely, it has never been tried. The grid has been operating continuously since World War II, and while they have all sorts of procedures worked out for restoring the grid should it ever crash, this is something you clearly don't get to practice like you do fire drills. No specific time estimates were mentioned, but he was clearly quite concerned about it, and it was clear that the procedure would be quite involved.

– Harald