this post was submitted on 14 May 2025
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‘Rogue’ devices found in Chinese solar inverters raises cybersecurity alarm in Europe (www.pv-tech.org)
submitted 1 week ago by Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org to c/technology@slrpnk.net
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/34531692

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US energy officials have found unexplained communication equipment inside some Chinese-made inverter devices.

[...]

Reuters reported the presence of undocumented and “rogue” communication devices in a number of Chinese-made solar inverters. These could potentially introduce unregulated and undocumented remote communication channels to the inverters, by which an actor could remotely bypass the cybersecurity firewalls that utility companies use to prevent direct communication back to China.

[...]

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[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Are we talking offline devices that were stealthily loaded with a 5G simcard or a Lora device waiting for a bricking code?

To my understanding, they found undeclared communication interfaces. Something that shouldn't have been there according to specs, but was.

Investigating how those could be used to brick a device would take a bit longer.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, well, from what sources do you gather that?

[–] perestroika@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Reuters (the second link) reports the news as "rogue communication devices", but also mentions battery packs with "undocumented cellular radios".

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Batteries pack with radio is weird. But really I don't understand why we don't have technical details.

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because it's propaganda fearmongering.

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago

It surely sounds like it. Which is annoying if they are crying out wolf, because China can and probably will (or did) put backdoors in its equipment.