— Are we only threatened by “smart” water heaters?

[rakhirhif8963]

- Johann, what surprises will you bring?

— Quite the opposite. Yes, our power plants are protected from attacks via the Internet quite reliably. They are simply not connected! But a mass shutdown can be arranged using water heaters. Yes, yes. Naturally, these water heaters must be “smart”. But there are more and more of them. People do not have enough simple water heaters and devices, everyone wants “smart” ones. It’s a pity that “smart” devices do not come with smart owners.


— Of course not! Smart water heaters, smart air belarus whatsapp data heating systems. These targets are much less centralized and less secure. Our researchers decided to find out what would happen if we attacked not the source of electricity, but the devices that consume it. In the course of the experiment, they simulated a situation where attackers had a large-scale botnet of consumer-grade Internet of Things devices, mainly water heaters, air conditioners, and other devices with high energy consumption. The researchers tried to find out how many devices would need to be hacked at the same time in order to cause a failure in the power grid.

As it turned out during the experiment, an increase in the load on a large power supply network serving about 38 million people by just 1% can disable most of the power grid. Such an increase in load can be provided by a botnet of tens of thousands of hacked water heaters or several hundred thousand air conditioners. A rapid increase in power consumption in one part of the power grid will cause an increase in voltage on certain power lines. This will lead either to their damage or to the activation of protective voltage relays that turn off the power in emergency situations.