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

[Peter Gutmann]

Arnold Reinhold <agr at me.com> writes:

>How much would it add to the cost of an electric meter to employ an SoC with
>enough power to implement the security standards? A dollar? Two?

Probably a few tens of cents.  Plus the cost of redesigning your hardware from
scratch, rewriting your code to fit the new hardware, testing it in the lab
and in the field, and getting the hardware and software certified to stringent
industry standards.  And then replacing all the infrastructure in the field.
Shouldn't take more than ten years of effort, fifteen tops.

(OK, that was somewhat sarcastic, but the "it's easy, just magically replace
all the hardware/software with totally new hardware/software that fixes it"
response gets old the five hundredth time you hear it).

Peter.