[Music]
all right cool um my name is sik codes
uh you might uh have seen some other
stuff before but today I'm going to be
talking about solar systems in
particular solar system C security and
the impact that it has on the power grid
which is a pretty important part of the
uh everything
right um just a quick disclaimer is your
audio okay yeah sick all right yeah just
it's an educational talk um I'm not
affiliated with anyone in this talk and
it's all good faith strictly good faith
no bad faith hacking here and everything
um yeah nothing represents my current
beliefs uh knock on wood or future Etc
and everything's creative common zero
anything else belongs to the people that
own that stuff so there's all my socials
you can see me on like GitHub Twitter
LinkedIn my
website I do trainings and stuff
penetration testing mainly for
Hardware so yeah so this talk is
suitable
for anyone who uses electricity so if
you raise your hand um yeah sweet I saw
some that didn't have that hand up so
hope hope you find this
useful and what am I so I am what they
call good faith
hacker um I follow all the uh Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act I forgot the second
a but it's not good um I follow all
those laws to the
letter and I'm just the messenger you
know I'm not the bad guy I'm not the um
yeah I'm not the I'm not the I'm not the
state threat actor and all that sort of
stuff I might be just like the town
crier just like yelling into the into
the night and what I'm not like I said
I'm not the threat actor and I wouldn't
consider myself uh a massive
expert and today's session is not a
lecture but more of a re between the
line session where you sort of you
extrapolate on what I'm thinking about
and you'll kind of you I'll kind of
remind you when we're talking about that
sort of stuff it's not overly technical
as well so it should be pretty funny so
who knows what this is
oh
wow yeah so this is a ripple control
receiver does anyone know what that
means now now that I've said
it I literally can't see a single
hand oh wow yeah so this is a ripple
control receiver that's cool um it sits
in your power box I don't know what you
guys call it it's like a
powerboard meter box meter board anyway
it sits on the um it sits in your
powerboard and waits for commands or
instructions from the grid so the Grid's
usually going like this so anyone like a
60 HZ or 50 HZ or something like that AC
power right you know up and down and the
Ripple the Ripple's this little Jagged
bit that you can kind of see um and
that's actually sent out by a machine
that sends it out to say something's
happening right and the and the ripples
can be between 30 or 180 seconds long
right and actually they're human audible
so you may even feel them you may you
may be able to um sense them in some
sort of aspect
this is the machine that generates it
it's called a ripple control
transmitter um if you got one of these
you should be pretty
sweet there's one there as well that's
the newer one it's a bit more bit more
condensed right and um if you're feeling
pretty uh what's the word for it if
you're feeling pretty naughty you can
load that one up it's in a container so
you can Chuck it on the back of a truck
and then drive around with it hook up to
the grid turn out some um impulses
ripples then run
off it actually shuts down the grid
until it receives a new signal so when
you send out a ripple it's like you know
turns off and then another command comes
through and sometimes the grids can
interfere with each other so they like
to send out multiple commands and
sometimes they do
interfere but yeah that's pretty
hardcore stuff like um no one has enough
money for one of those Ripple control
receivers right or inducers or
transmitters so I when you just hook up
to it with tcip TCP IP sorry obviously
their Network connected obviously
they've got terrible um
well actually haven't haven't hacked one
yet so it's just uh yeah up to 400,000
volts or KVA so there'll be something to
hack there but what else is connected to
the internet on the power grid um well
the answer is solar so solar is
connected right so similar to the
similar to the Ripple control inducer
transmitter whatever you want to call it
there is solar connected to the grid and
last year almost half of all new Power
generational capacity added to the grid
you know like new PL and your nuclear
whatever almost half was solar or
solar who looks after solar so like you
know who's hang on who's got solar oh
wow cool oh this would be really
relevant then who's got monitoring on
this solar
sweet so yeah who looks after solar the
household owner right the person who
buys the solar supposed to be looking
after
it um possibly energy.gov wants a bit of
a say in it uh obviously because it's
connected to the grid and it's going
into the grid so you're generating P so
they want to know about it there's this
office here called ceser or Caesar c s e
r security yeah the things there it's a
long one um nerk nrcc cisa CAA or cissa
whichever way you want to say it what's
anyway we talk about that later so why
is this interesting well it's funny
because if you think about it instead of
energy.gov looking after the Grid it's
now in the hands of regular household
owners and they are now the the
Guardians of the grid right and this is
the general um Family protecting their
home this is actually I just Googled
prepper
family it comes with survival Das
mastery.com so yeah it's funny so what
does a grid the OG grid look like the OG
grid looks like this you got some
massive Parts obviously transcends into
Canada um it's practically you know it's
the whole of North America
and if you want to quickly name them
they're pretty logical names W for West
M for Midwest t for Texas and so on and
so forth and just for completeness
completeness because some people
probably download these slides later to
study them for some reason but there's
some of the other ones in there so this
is the office that I just talked about
SE Cesar um and they sort of managed the
risk involved with
this and there's some cool resources you
can read read from their stuff so
clearly securing the grid is a well a
distributed grid so what is a
distributed grid uh a distributed grid
is your old method of power which is you
know power plants get sent out inverted
whatever comes out to houses and maybe a
couple of people have solar
right the future grid is like a
decentralized version like a Bitcoin for
bloody um for grid right everyone's got
an electric car just sucking up power
but they're all generating power so it's
kind of okay and then it's like a big
perpetuating cycle
however what happens when the power goes
out so the other term for that is what
happens when the grid supply drops and
I've got an accurate depiction of what
exactly happens
here maybe not house fires but the
concept is there so I took it to Google
said what happens not chat GT yet I said
what happens if you can't chall your
Tesla on Google this is hilarious by the
way it says I didn't highlight that by
the way it goes the car will
stop 30 Million
results and if you go to Tesla's website
so says vehicle charging during a power
adage and they've got an actual image
there it's pretty hard to see but
there's a grid a power wall which is the
Tesla battery if you're not unaware the
car and the home and the solar on the
roof so if you don't have a solar
electric car and a power wall you
practically it's you and the grid so the
G supply drops your supply drops but you
don't have to worry about charging your
test because you don't have
one what about electric planes I didn't
even know these were real but apparently
electric Aviation is arriving and it's a
priority and it would be weird if it
wasn't a priority I'll tell you
that I'm not ready for that either but
yeah so distributed energy resource
cyber security framework best practices
I found this cool study recently as
well I went on it I'm like I wonder what
they're saying about distributed energy
GRS such as solar GRS how are they going
to protect them and they've got all this
stuff here looks like they've just
ripped it straight out of like an ISO
standard um you know situational
awareness this one's even better okay
you need a force protection Personnel
Access Control
Personnel I OT T it D oh that's already
yeah system admin um by the way that's
for every household because it's
distributed right so everyone would have
to go hiring like 60 people right crazy
so if anyone's looking for a job
but yeah what really happens when the
power goes out like what's the genuine
effect uh and we've got some examples
like electric car stop charging we've
heard about that
one water stops pumping so if you're una
aware I live in Thailand fun funnily
enough I'm Australian obviously but we
electric pumps and like if the power
goes out the water stops moving it's
kind of annoying right refrigeration
motors stop things stop to cool uh
likewise air conditioners same thing
compressor Motors they also stop
so things start to to heat up obviously
dinos centers die you know goodbye rad
raay things like
that um cashless payment stop so you
know there's no more cash whatever it's
called Apple
pay and ready.gov recommends that you
throw away any food that's has been
exposed to temperatures of 40 degrees or
higher for two or more you years which
is a two or more
hours
if you're if you're eating food from two
years ago something
wrong what about catastrophic failure
right what happens with catastrophic
failure this is an example of
catastrophic failure so that's a whole
solar farm if we calculate roughly that
every panel on that farm is probably
like 200 to 300 watts okay so like a
half of a PC every P every every four
five panels you get a kilowatt and then
there's probably like what 1,000
kilowatt there so a megawatt 2 megawatts
that's a lot of power there's a couple
hundred homes are outside of that that
have to get power from elsewhere so Coal
fire gas diesel all sorts of
things um that was one I believe in
don't know it's in there somewhere but
um that's obviously
destroyed rooftop ones snow damaged
that's a 30 megawatt system well sorry
that's a 30 30 megawatt cumulative
amount of systems from
Japan and this is Alamo 2 Texas
um retail car shortage or something else
um yeah alamo2 Texas and believe it or
not to actually fix this whole system
they actually replace the entire thing
so yeah seems a bit sus right but you
know it's it's actually more efficient
to replace the whole thing we'll tell
you about that about why that is shortly
another study
there and there's a cool tool called a
FEMA risk tool and this tool this tool
tells you what you're at risk off and by
the way they actually updated the tool
yesterday so some of these some of these
graphs are actually a little bit
inaccurate so if you leave anywhere
around here you're susceptible to
Avalanches um which would do serious
damage obviously to well you know it's
relative but uh coastal flooding which
would obviously com combat solar you
know if you put yeah if the solar panel
is right near the water then obviously
they would be flooded earthquakes high
impact you know they're pretty
destructive on solar panels because they
tear the
glass hail has a medium to high impact
and we'll see some stuff about oh the
alamoo one that I showed you earlier
that was pure hail damage
heat waves which is actually not too bad
for solar um although electricity and
heat don't mix very well um unless you
have cooling the yeah the sun's pretty
sweet you know that's what solar solar
does right hurricanes obviously severely
damaging strong winds as well but you
know is solar really a big enough energy
source to actually care about any of
these sort of threat threat models from
the from Mother
Nature and the answer is kind of not
really depending on which part of the
country you're in but it's 2.8%
us-wide and if we look here it's
actually on the up and up that's the
green bar sort of getting bigger right
and this graph here goes to 2016 it's
sort of peaking peaking peing I think
it's like must be way higher than that
now but you know USA wide it may only be
2.8% however it's uh significantly
higher in some places and also capacity
which uh that might not be referencing
the 2.8% but capacity is not equal
actual usage so I'll give you an example
of a place that uses a lot of solar
which is
Hawaii um Hawaii realiz or provided or
used I don't know which one it is but
it's one of the other 70% of their power
was created with uh used from small
customer sided solar power generation so
you know the distributed energy model
that we're talking about and it's
actually the 10th highest in the state
but I'm not sure if that's 10 highest by
percentage or 10th highest generational
overall but yeah it's relative so let's
take a look at the Hawaii
airport so we're going to zoom in
because that's quite small but there's
sort of blue squares everywhere right
we'll zoom in a bit that's what they
look like these are panels these are
solar panels and you'll see them if you
go on Google Maps being or open street
maps or whatever whatever you can use to
um satellite view view satellite imagery
you'll start to see panels everywhere in
particular California all over Australia
I think they have 30% of households in
Australia have solar
um yeah but like here's an example I
tried to find really public places for
this talk because it's kind of it's kind
of sus
um because Google provides basically a
onetoone map of places you can attack to
destroy solar infrastructure right
because you you can see it from the
air um and someone could do a really
cool panel uh St really cool AI back
study at one stage I think they could
just uh you know assay all of the images
or whatever some people have done some
Google Google Images searches or sorry
Google Maps stuff before based on panel
Brands designs and the size of the panel
or the the the design of the panel for
example these panels here are like this
East West panels right zigzagging and
you can tell because there's a dark side
and there's a a lighter side and the
East West so the Sun goes over and as
the obviously I think it's east to west
I don't know someone to correct me
because I'm from Australia everything's
reversed so as the sun rises um you know
hits one part of the panel and then as
it goes over uh hits the other side so
you got power throughout the whole day
uh I'll give you another example that's
the also That's the older style of
arrangement of panels right so the older
style is to have it like that but panels
are so good now that the actual space is
more the more the limiting factor so you
want to sort of optimize for space the
darker the panel is these days the more
the more higher efficiency the panel has
because it's more concentrated
silicon um that means they're newer
panels and and your panels are going to
have Wi-Fi and
so you can start to see where I'm
getting at right so if you can identify
panels for from the air from the
satellite you can say oh I know what
that system's going to be or I know that
looks like really new system oh certain
amount of panels and you can sort of get
get a bit of Acumen about identifying
panels for example here's Hawaii airport
we just discussed I don't even think
this is the panels that I showed you
prior with the zigzags because these are
all quite flat and flat panels are
actually also pretty good as well
because they get sun throughout the
whole
day however I've got a cool story here
from Hawaii GV Department of Transport
installation of 3,000 new solar panels
at ha Honolulu airport is that right I
think so um yep they've added six 3,000
new panels on the garage uh contract
with a company called Johnson Controls
Inc 600 mli oh sorry about the font but
yeah it's red 600 million Energy savings
and it's the largest single state
contract of its kind in the entire
nation so this is what looks like and
I'll zoom in that's a car park that's a
solar car park so who's seen one of
these before like you can see you
probably can't see because you're
underneath it but yeah you I mean if you
seen it from the sky you definitely know
what you're looking at and you'll see
these everywhere now that you've looked
now you you've seen it right so it looks
like
underneath um I'll do a little zoom in
in a sec if you look around there you
see the panels are connected and there's
this this this thing
here um and there it is again
and oh yeah you can actually reach up
and turn them off I don't know if you're
aware of that but
yeah so yeah 600 mlie um if you go to
Hawaii airport soon you just go and
switch them off I didn't tell you to do
that please don't do that by the way so
what is that box obviously they should
be in a cage uh there's complications
with that like because it's so it's not
high voltage but it's really high
current they've got to be really close
to the panels that's why they put them
right underneath but you can obviously
just jump up and turn them off off so
they wouldn't even notice unless they
got Wi-Fi monitoring right so that box
is the inverter the inverter can do DC
to DC AC to DC DC to AC and all sorts of
different things
um and yeah what is the solar system
right who knows how a solar system
works sweet I'll give you a mini crash
course silicon they give you like a
little piece of silicon it's called a a
what are they seed that's right molten
silicon they just draw it up slowly and
it just like sucks up and you get these
big
ingots um that's a new way this is the
old way where it was really coar they
didn't heat it up as much and you get
this chunky looking solar this chunky
looking crystalline um silicon not as
efficient as if you did it when it's
pure crystalline so the new one looks
like that sand silicon crystals thick
ingots oh yeah by the way the reason why
they're square is because they're
they're circles right it's the same
Wafers they use for CPUs they chop it up
and they cut the edges off so they
tesselate and then it's not actually
like a hexagon shape but if you look
they're kind of kind of curved at the
very tippity Corners um exactly the same
as uh using a CP doing CPU
dieses chunky looking solar is on the
way out in fact it's practically extinct
uh as you can know by the big dark blue
going like that there's some thick
ingots you can buy it's probably not
useful they're really big Wafers to be
honest they're probably CPU Wafers to be
fair and that's what they look like when
they're chopped up if you want to turn
it into
solar you just put a bit of Bor on one
side and phosphorus on the other and
that's it you make a little electron
hole or or a positive charge and if you
want to quickly look at it that's what
it looks like you just basically Chuck
phosphorus in the middle of a bunch of
silicon and as you can see it's not it's
not supposed to be there so it's a
little hole that's all solar is and they
put little lines they put little bus
bars on it that's it so now we're all
solar experts um the darker the panel
means more more concentrated silicon
right more concentrated not like that
chunky looking thing more power so they
can get really high power like 23% power
at the moment from a single panel as
opposed to previously the lighter blue
panels 16 to 17% Now you kind of
understand why they replaced the entire
Alamo thing because they were probably
maybe 300 WT panels and if they replace
the whole thing they get like 440 watt
panels so they get an extra like 50%
even though they had a hail storm it's
kind of funny um but the best part about
that is you can IDE these from the from
the satellite imagery now you're like oh
cool you know if they're cutting half
half if you can see little dots between
all the tessellations if there's no
tessellation all sorts of cool stuff and
there actually a race uh a race to the
top of uh efficiency based on making the
panels
more uh more efficient so I think
SunPower they have oh by the way the
ones underneath that that thing that I
showed you previously from the car park
in Hawaii airport in Minecraft um that
had that was a some power inverter as
well and I think yeah 440 W panels but
we don't need need to worry about panels
because they're quite inert right
there's nothing they're just like pieces
of silicon glass so the inverter is the
Wi-Fi thing right and by the way we're
not discussing micro inverters today
like nase who's got
nase yeah SI a couple who's got sunow
some oh sweet so this is a bunch of uh
very popular inverters almost all of
them made in China oh yeah solar he's
got solaredge
okay sweet so solar is Rally company
uh believe manufacturing China
Huawei uh same oh sorry definitely not
manufacturing China main China Etc SMA
uh German but also made in China but
also back to Germany I think I think
they moved it back but today some
popular ones we're looking at Huawei
good we grow what in particular Huawei
or whatwe so the most important features
according to customers um it's probably
Wi-Fi monitoring so it's it's hagd
so the question is can you you know
considering the the CH the change in um
uh resolution of Hagrid's face
there can you do damage with Wi-Fi or
loss of Wi-Fi or can people come in
through Wi-Fi and attack soloc systems
and you know you can you cause
catastrophic failure over Wi-Fi so let's
take a look so what should we look for
well let's look for software controlled
limits maybe export limiting code code
that tells the inverted to cool off a
little bit you maybe control the fans
turn the fans off maybe make it explode
or maybe make it fail make it produce a
certain amount of power um that's less
than the max you know bad code maybe
there's a bad installation process maybe
it was incorrectly installed um in
particular with respect to networking
maybe they set up the networking really
bad um or maybe it has a really large
single point of failure such as
centralized control of the of the entire
system
and you can
imagine um we'll get into that so nerk
apparently is uh obsessed with cyber now
they reliability uh corporation that
manages power something or other they
released a port recently report and it
was um pretty cyber was pretty up there
on the on the list of things so the 2022
state of reliability so extreme cold
causes lad shedding right who's
experienced lad
shedding it's the power goes out when
there's anyway we'll talk about it
shortly so load shining is pretty rare
in most places in South Africa it's
every single day um and there's a couple
of reasons why we'll talk about that
shortly um cyber security geopolitical
you know price of things coal gas diesel
whatever and that incident we talked
about earlier Texas loss event that was
Alm one they referred to it in the nerk
report and um unaddressed issues with
inverters and reliability poses a risk
uh and the last one there new standards
under development will mitigate inverted
risk so that's basically saying we don't
have the right standards right now and
the reliability is not there and we
aren't mitigating risk properly just
read it backwards right so can we force
an inverter to fail based on those
inverter fragmentation or what's the
word for it those instructions that we
just got not instructions those
pointers can we push malw inverters you
know can we push malw inverter oh we'll
think about that uh can we can we drop a
certain percentage inverters at once
maybe we could say like well um say
Huawei you know goes offline for a
little bit for some sort of reason you
know would the inverter still work um
can we force a weather event that's not
too farfetched I don't know if who's
played Red Alert we got the weather
control
stuff um Huawei it's one of my favorite
companies jokes
um they're not too mad they're fine they
make cool products um so PV magazine
really popular uh PV means photo volic
by the way and we're all becoming solar
experts today I'm not going to test you
on it but you can go home and be like
you know I know everything about solar
now NP type doping and everything we
we've already learned that by the way um
special edition developed in partnership
with Huawei Huawei is a popular brand
they have no idea I'm talking about them
today um that's what their inverter
looks like it's called the sun 2000 and
a lot of uh people get annoyed about it
because you think two they talk in
kilowatts right this is a 6 kilowatt
inverter 5 kilow inverter 3 kilow
inverter but hawe decided to call all
there's the sun 2000 which you would
think would be a two 2 kwatt inverter
but then they just said Sun 20005 kwatt
Sun 2000 3 Kow it's really annoying for
the customers they're like oh I wanted
the sun 4,000 that doesn't exist
dude they've got a really cool energy
management app kind of looks like
Tesla's at right you know bit of Ip uh
borrowing
there not that Tesla owns that IP anyway
you know it's probably somewhere else
like I don't know um Rockwell Automation
or something I love dropping names of
companies cuz then they have to watch it
later Trimble um John Deere
LOL yeah PV and ESS ESS I think is
electrical or energy storage solutions
that's a big farm right there right
obviously it's a JPEG or a 3D render um
and it's visual electricity for some
reason but uh with Huawei you can live
towards the sun giving life to new homes
or whatever that says um Emma is your
Smart Energy Management assistant don't
know if it's AI but you've got some sort
of Bot that manages your energy for you
named Emma don't need to worry about
blackouts anymore just enjoy the moment
um without worrying about power
blackouts and if you join if you get a
Huawei Inver you can start a new green
zero carbon life
today um by the way that's solar hot
water in the video in the picture it's
not even solar panels so I think the I
think the the log cabin in the front
though is a little bit though so I don't
even know what that
is safety and reliability guarantee High
PV system safety safety Pro Pro active
safety think about that proactive what
do you think that means proactive
probably doing something probably
looking at it sniffing
around um and here's uh here's what
their diagram is right that's panels on
the roof new panels really dark looking
things you can barely see them if we
zoom in a bit there's the inverter
that's the Huawei Sun 2000 probably 5
kilow and a Tesla or discount Tesla and
a battery
underneath
uh I've got one in my bag actually but
the Silicon they use in the chips is
unsanctioned it's a high silicon chip so
they're I think they're like the Chip's
like massive it's like two inches right
um and they spe and by the way it's own
by Hui as well they go against strong
signal disruption communication never
been reliable I believe it's referring
to sanctions because they've been
sanctioned by arm I think which is kind
of complex or someone's been sanctioned
by arm but anyway um you know fine chips
fine chips um it's high sink or high
silicon fabulous uh semiconductors from
Shenzhen owned by Huawei immune dis
sanctions which is irrelevant by the way
but um how does it work so with a
residential system uh you can download
the app called Fusion solar you can't
get it on the App Store you got to get
it from the hway app
gallery uh we'll get into that shortly
but in this diagram we've got a couple
of features to the solar system we've
got smart string ESS which is the
battery optimizers monitoring backup box
all this stuff the sun 2000s again
the dongles which we're going to look
right into and the energy controller I
don't know what that is but the power
sensor as well and I think that's a
Delta power center centor but rebranded
as Huawei here's the smart dongles right
there's a there's a wireless land one um
with a fe we'll get into that shortly
and a 4G
one that's what they look like uh
they're just you know just a dongle um
there's my QR code for it serial number
registration key um
slides will be up later you can have a
look at it but if you scan the QR you
get this serial number sequential serial
numbers F FYI so the next one is a 606
and 607 and so on so on the registration
key um don't know there probably random
but SSID the serial number and the
password is change me with a Capital C
secure
as
um and I don't think it never gets
changed so supports all those cool
things 10 devices um per dong
ip65 so ip65 means it's rated for dust
tip protection against water from a
nozzle so attacks like this if you squir
it with water
um by the way this is a I don't know
people said this meme before it's how to
keep a coyote away from campsites or
homesteads it's on Wiki how so
funny so where does the dongle go the
dongle just shoves into the body botom
there's a port underneath it and it just
jumps in the bottom and here's an
example um yeah so that's what it looks
like here so is there any who sees
something odd with this pick right here
there's something odd going on and it's
pretty dark I apologize I'll zoom in
real quick there's a blue cable there
that um traditionally runs ethernet and
it just comes outside of the house and
that's outdoor ethernet plugging into
your into your um inverter so if you
want to hack this guy just go up pull
out the uh inverter lead and then plug
in
so how do you defend against that you
know do you put DHCP or dchp whatever it
is or do you isolate it put on its own
you know VLAN or or you know by Mac
address or a
VPN well they updated it recently I
believe um to a Sim version that one
there's got a SIM card in it um I'm
going to try not to dox anyone in a
couple of these photos but uh let's have
a look try not to do anyone all the
following slides occurred in a game
called
Minecraft
yeah that's the cost going
Minecraft is it oh it is too um
multi-story buildings so obviously
solar's on the roof right so the
inverter is going to be on the roof
however it has to be uh relatively
accessible by fire um things like that
right fire fire fighters Etc because
they have to be able to go and turn it
off that's the whole point because when
there's a fire or something like that
you have to turn it off otherwise you be
electrocuted
instantly because pure DC current um
also they like I said before they have
to be close to the inverter so you can
suffer from power loss from the cable
resistance so instead of getting really
thick cables they just put the inverters
right near the
panels um and then yeah inverters would
typically be on the roof like I said to
avoid um to avoid fires and prevent
rapid shot allow rapid shut shut down
they're generally accessible so these a
random Public Library um in Hawaii I
think uh just zooming in by the way I
had to pick public places because I
didn't want to get arrested um not that
there's something wrong with this it's
all publicly available information but I
was joking yesterday but so is zeray
right they're all publicly available
just no one's no one's put the dots
together yet
right so if we look here I see some
cables running around so those cables
drop off um some part of the building I
believe and if I zoom in a bit on this
library in Minecraft if we zoom in you
see like it's like a bunch of cables and
they typically look like you know the
corrugated I don't know what you guys
call it but the corrugated um cables
generally house the DC solar cables um
thanks Google thanks
G but yeah arguments against well like
what's the point of going up there and
hacking into something that's Wi-Fi
connected well you know there's 5G
Towers up there maybe I could just rip
one of those off instead and hacking
everyone's cell networks or to do
something like that plus the Wi-Fi
already has Wei sorry the library's
already got free Wi-Fi you can go on
like you can already join the the Wi-Fi
for free um the library maybe is not
important to you um but like I said
earlier just read between the lines you
know it's a library there's obviously
costos in Minecraft and all sorts of
things like that that exist and there's
a lot of systems out there and I can
tell you now if you zoom in later you'll
be able to see and what's next slide oh
what's this it's like a random airport
car park as well Sandy what's this
couple of slides I shouldn't have left
in here what the heck what the hell's
all that oh it's weird oh on um you
see the dongles on those ones like you
can reach from the public EAS at the
dongle um oh there's another one there
oh anyway those were the wrong
slides I've left them in there
before yeah the Minecraft graphics got
real
good um ip65 WLAN or the other one was F
I don't know what that means someone
knows what it means but it's ethernet
something so cis's cissa size security
tip is your wireless router is the
primary interest point for simic
criminals to gr to gain access to all of
your passwords Etc um so in the case of
Huawei it's outside I think this photo
is hilarious because there's a perfectly
good house right next to them and
they're camping in the yard it's like
the funniest thing I see I know people
do it but it just seems really funny to
see it like that it's like it's a
perfectly good house right next to
you so who's ever installed routers
outside the house or dragged anything
out outside of the house including CCTV
CCTV or DVRs yeah right well the thing
about CCTV or video things like that is
typically you have a DVR or an MVR um
which would segmented off anyway not in
the case of solo they're practically
plug andplay they're Consumer Electronic
style stuff and they just yeah just jump
straight in um Solutions well you could
assign an IP for a physical Port uh but
then you'd have to do a lot of work as
the installer and you have to know like
dlink you know Toto link I don't even
know if you guys have this brand here
but you know even Huawei routers as well
CTE um
Motorola yeah you can isolate based on
Mac addresses maybe set up a VPN VLAN
way too much work right because it's
just one little house just one small
house you know 6 kilowatt it's nothing
right however what about if it's
centralized what if one company has
access to all of the inverters of that
brand and have a certain percentage of a
market in a country for example able uh
if you want to have a look you can
download the Huawei app gallery it is a
trusted
app if a system warning appears during
installation press
okay super
recommended it's actually yeah you can't
find on the App Store you have to go to
the Huawei app
gallery by the way I've got nothing
against Huawei like I've just hacked TC
before and they bought a they bought the
onop phone brand from them lol um Fusion
dollar that's the app two Mill in stores
ad checked virus checked manually
checked so you know it's good uh you can
go in there and um set up some requests
with user one username admin get little
successes um that's awkward hang on is
that oh yeah that wasn't supposed to be
there so this is a list of permissions
that you can have um like pvms photoal
take monitoring system probably
something other than that you know this
this the way this permission list you
can sign up as a developer and get this
as as well and I and I've also given you
my QR code so you can scan my QR code
later as well and add that dongle that
I've got to your system virtual system
it's not a real
one um this permission list is like
pages and pages long it's like the
stacks of them and um I haven't really
had enough uh enough time to go through
or more because there's hundreds of them
but back to the dongle this what the
dongle looks like um it's pretty
cool it is like I said ethernet jacket
in there it's lead free and look how big
that chip is that's a real big chip so
uh don't know what architecture it is
probably um but yeah there's some got a
little wireless network there as well
blur out the serial number which doesn't
even matter CU I gave it to you earlier
um bottom right should see some uart but
I think I've circled it out here covered
in epoxy as
typical yeah dual uart I think one's
probably for the for the landan one's
probably for the Wi-Fi typically happens
and usually when you log into those ones
like I did it with the who's got a Tapo
energy socket is that one of those
Wireless Tapo energy sockets oh good
they're terrible um like you just just
straight in it goes like your SSID is
and then you're just like oh sweet plain
text not that they're any secure or
anything like but you know I don't
really needed to control my w sockets
with Wi-Fi but Mo most likely just has a
SSID hanging there um that was me just
mucking around with it does anyone know
what A4 j8 means it's like rs485 I
couldn't this guy knows can chat with me
later about it thanks man I couldn't
figure it out I was asking for something
cuz I'm not the inverter so I'm just
plugging it in the inverter is supposed
to tell it something anyway so is this
centralized well according to our way it
is so we look there we've got the master
inverter this the dongle the ethernet to
the router the internet and the
management system and you know they're
controlling each other because they got
the double they got the two arrows you
know like the double-edged arrows on
both
sides um which by the way uh what it
means is Huawei has rs485 control over
your inverter so I personally would
prefer to self-manage my distributed uh
Energy Systems rather than use hua's
managed systems um that's just my
opinion Some people prefer the opposite
like you know um similar with John Deere
they'll prefer John Deere to have their
data versus you know guys like myself um
yeah final stretch some threat modeling
here uh Epi uh didn't know what they
were but there's a lot of there there a
lot of energy is a bit a bit awkward
there's a lot of companies that a lot of
organizations that are sort of segmented
um and they they're having a trouble
having a bit of trouble sort of who's
who's responsible for cyber and it's
part of the thing but yeah so the reason
is because today's electric grid was not
designed uh for two-way electricity
because solar generates the power sends
it back to the Grid electri electricity
was typically generated sorry created to
go the other way just out one way from
the generator as from the Cal Fire
plants or whatever straight to the
household but not the other way so
there's a lot of stress on the grid and
plus the grid has no visibility on all
of the inverters and all of the things
that are being generated um at people's
distributed Energy
Systems um like I said yeah large
transvers of energy lots of variability
like um for
example look what we got here uh
variable uncertain in inverter base so
that's what we're talking about we got
inverters uh which are the solar systems
electricity um generational sources and
then we've got uh within customer
facilities unless they're on the roof or
out in the
street um yeah it creates problems with
visibility decision- making and Rapid
action control of organizations or
government things that need to manage
that uh I think I've got here create a
new operating challenges I think that
was supposed to be on this side but car
Parks as well so that was supposed to be
on that side customer facilities or car
Parks but yeah um yeah so as we migrate
cuz this is not stopping by the way
people will eventually have solar
there'll be more solar plants and a lot
more a lot less centralized you know
nuclear and things like that but what it
will do it was there's a benefits to it
right so in terms of failures like say
there's house fires or things like that
obviously they're bad but they're
localized you know having a small house
fire terrible for the owner there
probably Game Theory stuff right now
right but you know as opposed the losing
the entire solar farm which would do
like U exponential amounts of damage to
the power supply
so the localized values which is
beneficial so best inverters according
to solar quotes which is a large
Australian solar quoting company because
like I said Australia is B hellbent on
solar uh phonus the Austrian one up
first Huawei is actually last in this
and that's a score of zero and I believe
that's from installers so that's people
that's the installers who voted to say
what's your favorite inverter as an
installation person most of them said n
phase solar Edge very popular brands
here why we got last I don't even think
that's one it might be one or zero but
so catastrophic activity that I see
happening in the industry currently I
currently see centralized control by the
way the other brands all do the same
things goodwi grow what sangro you know
they're all overseas management same way
as like I mean I think you know what I'm
saying right it's it's like it's like
having a a phone from a certain company
that's not located in the country and
then you're at the behest of their of
their
decisions so centralized control of a
brand that has a significant grasp on
the power grid is kind of concerning to
me hope it's concerning to you as well
but um disabling all of those models all
at once would be catastrophic right
because um for example in Hawaii I keep
getting Huawei and Hawaii mixed up by
the way um not today which is good but
I'll probably do it later but so the
grid Supply if you drop the 70% of the
Grid in one go it's you're going to
experience load shedding
so it's complicated but basically the
grid will drop and then the the existing
Coal fire nuclear whatever they'll ramp
up and then there's a certain point
where they can't and they'll turn off
just to save the infrastructure because
they keep going they'll burst the
infrastructure and just you'll never get
power for there for a while certain
amount of time and you get power out and
this happens in a country called South
Africa so X esum I think is one of the
largest or probably the power
distributor in the country they are
experiencing load shedding stage six and
I met a dude at the airport recently
like like four days ago at Minneapolis
and he's like he had a John Deere hat on
I was like oh do you work for John Deere
I hacked John Deere last year um and
he's like no man I'm here for um I'm
here for uh anyway he's doing farming or
something h2av out in Illinois Iowa
shout out to that dude uh and I was like
yeah dude you guys are low Ching High
over there he's like y like every day
the power goes out because of things
such as a little bit of corruption but
distributed
problems breaker trips but mainly cable
theft they have a massive problem with
cable theft people just go up risk their
lives you know burn stuff whatever and
then take the cables because cables are
extremely uh valuable if they're made of
copper um yeah like I said they get load
shedding and what do they do when they
experience load shedding and I'm pretty
sure this happens in California uh I've
seen I swear I saw some articles about
something about lad last year
in California maybe once or twice um but
South Africa Burns diesel to meet the
demand so it's quite ridiculous when you
think about it right like who would burn
diesel uh instead of running generators
well that's just how it works over there
they can't really they don't have a
choice because the G is in a certain
State certain amount of people certain
amount of things happening things you
know extraneous events happen and then
they have to diesel to to satisfy the
the the load or just turn everything off
and as we saw before Ready doov 2 hours
and everything's spoiled for two years
whatever it was
um yeah and they have a lot of
Maintenance as well and generating unit
repairs all this stuff and also it
causes an undersupply of things such as
diesel so if you're burning all the
diesel what are you going to use to
power trucks right what are you going to
do to all that stuff price of diesel
goes up like we're talking you know
massive right so if you go on the X XM
website this was is in a 3-day period I
if you go on there now you there's way
more updated events but here's an
example due to you know breakdown of
generation 8 whatever I think it's a
nuclear plant by the way you know uh
where where stage six load Shing is
happening uh you know cerg nuclear P
power plant as well unit 2's back in
service load shedding three and four and
now they're up to six wild right so my
answer a question for you today is can
you induce low Ching who thinks they can
induce low
ching sweet no I mean like I've taught
you how to do it right haven't I so like
yeah I would probably hack huawe get in
there um maliciously update all the
inverters tell them to wipe themselves
rmrf no preserve root
stuff yeah the answer should be clear
like I'm not saying go out there and do
whatever you want but it's definitely a
risk um and there's more Brands maybe of
the 70% maybe in the US there's maybe
like one% Huawei small small amount but
some places might be a lot
right um
a lot of countries are different to the
US right us is even in this list but uh
I'll zoom in a bit and I've sort of
categorized it off share of total
consumption of I think it's power
obviously but uh Australia 10% is
something or other have used solar
Germany 10% roughly Honduras
12.9 so say you knocked out solo one go
maybe you hacked all of the solo
companies and just went you're out that
would be pretty catastrophic
right um that would be distributed
energy Cyber attack unaffected by the
weather but still sort of kind of like a
hail storm but same damage as a hail
storm but conducted through
cyber uh catastrophic consequences
people die food spoils Teslas don't stop
charging
Etc um we might have a problem with
maybe not in the US but definitely not
in Australia we have problems with over
over Reliance on Brands such as huawe
good weed grow what Etc I know in the US
you typically use uh yeah like I said n
phase and uh solar Edge which are more
reputable and I believe have local not
sure about n phase but I definitely know
solaredge is more um aligned trusting in
insecure products nurk released a report
remember and said like we have no idea
what's going on with the inverter um
maintenance and all that stuff they know
that they're vulnerable they know that
they're not not satisfied and I think
yesterday um or two weeks ago New South
Wales government in Australia actually
asked for a recall on all of the solar
or solx batteries and another one I
think it was LG cem they did a recall
and that may CA house fires
so not good um yeah little to no
assessment I don't think anyone's
actually looked at solar inverters that
much or if they have um I haven't seen
much of the research on it or it's not
public uh doubt they'll have bug
bounties but they probably will after
this um if they don't I probably
wouldn't use them you know don't use
them without bug bounties and stuff um
so yeah if you want to participate and
have a look and maybe inspect some of
the Huawei uh or Huawei firmware you can
download the app from the mega secure
store from the Huawei store then once
you get into the app go Setup Wizard
create a plant they call plants like
power plant right jump in there um and
you can scan the QR code that I had I
don't know if it'll work for everyone if
we all scan it but um yeah once you scan
it delete it so someone else can have a
crack at it anyway once you download it
it goes o updates detected for the
inverter and for the uh dongle and you
end up getting um the updates 30
something Megs uh and then you get a
stack of files here like sun 2000 MC I
know you can't read it but I'll read one
out you know Sun 2000 LV low voltage you
know Fusion solar package stacks of zip
files by the way this is on my phone all
these zip files that you get from Huawei
by scanning it you can go and inspect
that firmware and that's the live
firmware that you'll get on an inverter
so you don't even need an inverter to
hack it right and um with that if
anyone's got any questions appreciate it
and
[Applause]
yeah sorry who's got questions any
questions dude with the blue
shirt can you speak up sorry you know
fast yeah I can't hear that well how
fast I can update what the map
interface oh okay right um you mean the
one that the one that I could scan them
in well it's once you scan it in it's
it's basically it's telling it it's
basically it's it's it's messed up right
it's phoning home the whole thing
centralized I didn't agree with it but
as soon as you scan it in it's yeah it's
it's it's it's locked up so basically
it's if R repair is your thing then that
is definitely not on the wavelength of
right repair fully centralized no
repairs and stuff like that um
completely dangerous anyone
else feel free to just come up as well
if you want to ask me a question I
literally can't see any hands oh yeah
what's
up I can't hear that like
yeah
yeah the question was about Ripple
Ripple control receivers I just sort of
jazzed up the talk with that um
everyone's probably got one in the room
if you got high peak and low Peak
electricity you'll probably have a rle
control receiver yeah I was just sort of
prefacing like here's some big stuff you
can do by attacking energy um and then
sort of saying well you don't need to do
all that you don't need to get a semi
truck you can do it from the comfort of
your own home sort of bringing it back
down to the Cyber risk rather than the
physical um attacks that you could
conduct but yes you can definitely
attack a a grid a localized area of the
grid because they segment them off but
you can definitely do um
uh wave what are they called again I
just
forgot yeah the the thing that impulses
I forgot what it's called
Already anyone else
yeah the question was about can you
bitbang out a ripple control receiver
and I believe you can uh I haven't
conducted research on it because I don't
want to I don't want to destroy the grid
but I definitely know that if you hook
up to the grid and you you can sort of I
think they use like offset Motors like
there's like a motor with like you like
Motors got it's like a offset one and it
goes all that and it ripples it I don't
know but um it's definitely possible I
don't know the cost and I don't know how
to do it but it's some someone can
definitely do it I wouldn't I would
consider I would honestly think it's Act
of terrorism if you did it but just
don't get caught in Minecraft does that
work is anyone else sweet all right
thanks