Technology

59366 readers

3582 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

512-bit RSA key in home energy system gives control of “virtual power plant” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 months ago by GreenEngineering3475@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 50 points 3 months ago

Castellucci, whose pronouns are they/them, acquired this remarkable control after gaining access to the administrative account for GivEnergy, the UK-based energy management provider who supplied the systems. In addition to the control over an estimated 60,000 installed systems, the admin account—which amounts to root control of the company's cloud-connected products—also made it possible for them to enumerate names, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, and addresses of all other GivEnergy customers (something the researcher didn't actually do).

tl;dr: hacker (the good kind) exploits weak encryption key to gain access to the utility's management system. Because you too were probably wondering how key length and power generation could possibly be related.