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

[Peter Gutmann]

Wendy M. Grossman <wendyg at pelicancrossing.net> writes:

>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.

So that's an interesting question, if I was uh terrist, would I target the
grid or the people using it?  I wouldn't go for the grid for several reasons.
Firstly, you'd need to be able to shut down vast numbers of power meters, of
different makes and models, run by different companies, at the same time.  In
political terms, attacking a national grid is equivalent to a declaration of
war on the country in question, which means you'd never be safe again.
Finally, you can get a lot of the same effect much cheaper by bringing down a
few HDVC bearers in strategic locations, which requires nothing more than some
explosives and a few volunteers, no high-tech needed.

OTOH demonstrating that you can affect individuals anywhere, any time, will be
far more effective in causing terr.  Instead of "nation attacked, everyone
pulls together" it's "phantom terrists strike again, you could be next".  Lord
Haw-Haw used this sort of thing to great effect during WWII, reporting trivia
about small towns in England (e.g. that the village clock in Upper Piddling
was running five minutes fast) to indicate that the enemy was everywhere among
you and there was nothing you could do about it.

Peter.