[HN Gopher] Hacker reveals smart meters are spilling secrets abo...
___________________________________________________________________
Hacker reveals smart meters are spilling secrets about the Texas
snowstorm
Author : certifiedloud
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-06-25 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dailydot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dailydot.com)
| runbathtime wrote:
| I also don't buy their security excuse for not releasing info on
| whose power never got turned off.
|
| If the ERCOT Grid was really concerned about cyber attacks they
| wouldn't be partnering with Bitcoin mining companies that have
| access to the grid, and have a special partnership with ERCOT.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/layer1-launches-bit...
| speakspokespok wrote:
| The person mentioned in the article bought the meters off eBay
| and is reversing the firmware off those. Perhaps they're
| identical to what's on his house but it's implied he's
| 'phreaking' over his city's power grid and that's not the case at
| all. There's nothing illegal here. Remember when we understood
| and applauded this behavior?
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Is this legal?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Yes
| smartbit wrote:
| Under the GDPR it would probably not be legal to send the
| signals unencrypted.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I follow the researcher on TikTok, whilst I enjoy his work this
| article is a big nothing burger. Each individual ERCOT customer
| is able to access fine grained meter data *of their own meter*,
| not the meter data of others. If everyone is so concerned about
| what the meters actually say Texans can volunteer their data for
| the purposes of this research.
|
| Since the meters broadcast in the clear I would not be surprised
| if war driving becomes standard practice for the retail
| electricity providers. Yes that's right. When you sign up with a
| REP they don't know your habits: how much power you're actually
| going to use or when. Having historic meter data is a competitive
| advantage in building your pricing models.
|
| I'm getting really tired of people who have no idea how the
| system functions in Texas making strong assertions based on
| errors and sweeping generalizations from journalists that don't
| have a clue how things work either.
|
| I have two U.S. ISO's, multiple REPs, and a large generator as
| clients. I know people on the board of ERCOT and get the back
| story on everything, especially things the public will never hear
| about. This business has nothing in common with anything you've
| probably read unless it comes from industry insiders.
| adolph wrote:
| You know people _still_ on the board of ERCOT?
|
| http://www.ercot.com/committee/board
|
| Contact Information Chair: Vacant Vice Chair: Vacant
| djanogo wrote:
| Sort of agree, the only "secret" in this case is how long the
| meter has been up?, I assume they can mitigate the "hack" by
| just rebooting RF part of the meter randomly? (I only say this
| because I read they have remote capability to reboot zigbee
| feature)
|
| I know they stopped accepting zigbee device pairing starting
| this year, and only allow authenticated API based requests
| which is delayed by 24 hours. Right now there is no way for
| customer to get real time data from the meters themselves.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I think this is interesting not necessarily in a security
| sense, but more in a "wow, you can do that" kind of sense.
| Also considering how distribution companies have refused to
| provide this data, you'd think it would be harder to obtain.
| Black101 wrote:
| using this: https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr, I could read the
| meters of about 30 of my neighbors... and I was not living in
| apartments... Yards in that neighborhood were about 150ftx75ft.
| And I would get meter reading updates about every other minute. I
| used the stock rtl-sdr antenna and didn't even place it outside
| my home.
| runbathtime wrote:
| This information should be a freedom of information request and
| made available to the public.
|
| If the same people are always forced to endure the burden of
| blackouts, and elites are not they will keep happening.
| naikrovek wrote:
| > "If we want a secure system that's resilient against attack
| then it must be openly attacked, otherwise nothing will be done."
|
| this is a brilliant bit of knowledge that I had somehow slightly
| understood and had never seen verbalized anywhere previously. as
| a bonus, it is perfectly worded.
|
| he is exactly right; to use an analogy: an immune system that is
| never attacked cannot defend against _any_ attack, because only
| attacks can teach the immune system how to defend. it 's the same
| (mostly) for computer security concerns.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Next up. Jiggling in the power usage will allow hackers to
| reconstruct video signals on monitors.
| oblib wrote:
| "A recent study published by the Lawrence Berkeley National
| Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, and University of
| Massachusetts-Amherst asserted that minority areas were over four
| times as likely to suffer from an energy blackout than white-
| majority areas."
|
| That's a problem.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Poorer areas are going to have poorer infrastructure in place
| more susceptible to natural disaster. If you fix the
| infrastructure, it stops being as poor of a region and then the
| poor leave due to higher property taxes.
|
| Also "over [N] times higher" is usually a marker that you're
| being misled. Four times 0.00001 is still an extremely small
| number, not even statistically significant.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Statistical significance is whether or not the data support
| rejecting the null hypothesis. Effect size is the difference
| between the two samples. You can have statistically
| significant results with a very small effect size.
| edoceo wrote:
| They said "minority" then you equivocate to "poor". Those are
| not the same thing.
|
| Also, TFA: "Income status of areas did not appear to be a
| strong factor"
| username90 wrote:
| They didn't shut down areas with hospitals or other important
| facilities. Likely there aren't many such facilities in
| minority areas.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| At the bottom of the article: the prescience of these
| important facilities decreased the probability of a shutdown
| from 0-6%. Probably look for a better hypothesis.
|
| What was also interesting is that it correlated with altitude
| of the meter which indicates a preference for wealthier
| neighborhoods.
|
| The problem is that the data Hash collected is incomplete and
| hard to draw conclusions from:
|
| * It's a war driving effort of a small strip of Dallas * The
| data becomes impossible to capture as normal interruptions
| happen and reset the uptime counter.
|
| It's also unclear to me if these uptime counters are affected
| by having a generator or other backup power supply. One of
| the examples he noted was a Chase Bank that hadn't
| experienced an interruption at all.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The effect sizes and neighborhood-level disparities were
| referring to a nationwide study of all blackout conducted
| by the cited universities (and LLNL), in case that wasn't
| clear. Hash's war-driving data from Dallas is totally
| separate.
|
| I live in Dallas and can tell you there was no disparity
| during this last winter storm. Unless you were critical
| infrastructure, they blacked out everyone. I live within
| spitting distance of city hall and I was still losing power
| every few hours for two weeks.
| umvi wrote:
| Again though... this needn't be attributed to racism. It's not
| like power companies are like "hmm, grid is under strain, guess
| we better cut black people and latino people's power first"
|
| Re-frame the problem in terms of rich vs. poor. Now it makes
| sense because power companies (which are privatized in Texas)
| will prioritize fixing infrastructure for their reliable,
| paying customers over fixing infrastructure for more unreliable
| customers (which poor people tend to be). And it happens that
| some minorities have a higher probability of being poor
| (because of inter-generational poverty, or just being an
| immigrant coming from a poor country).
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Just to be clear, because I don't think you're making this
| mistake, but it seems like people replying to you are, this
| research data is referring to all blackouts nationwide over
| some study period, not the Texas ten-year storm from a few
| months ago.
|
| When that storm hit, ability to pay meant absolutely nothing.
| Poor and rich alike all lost power. When the generating
| stations and lines all freeze, it becomes impossible to get
| energy out, whether anyone can pay or not. Money doesn't
| magically make capacity appear when the delivery network
| itself fails. That was really the downfall of the Texas
| approach. Naive economics assumes you can deal with shortages
| by just rationing using price, and higher prices will
| incentivize producers to produce more. But if the delivery
| infrastructure stops working, it makes no difference what the
| producers' incentives are. They can't deliver anything
| whether they want to or not, no matter what you're willing to
| pay them.
| corndoge wrote:
| > Now it makes sense because power companies (which are
| privatized in Texas) will prioritize their reliable, paying
| customers over less reliable customers that might miss
| payments.
|
| Not that I necessarily disagree with this but do you have any
| data to back this claim up?
| username90 wrote:
| When you have to pay thousands of dollars per mwh it is
| pretty likely that many in poorer areas wont pay. And yeah,
| that rate is not impossible in Texas, they even have a law
| capping how high it can go since it is a problem.
|
| Edit: I am pretty sure that many poor homes wouldn't be
| able to pay a power bill of a few thousand dollars, which
| is what you'd pay if you have variable rate and ran as
| normal throughout the texas power crisis.
| amock wrote:
| How many people had to pay higher than usual rates? As
| far as I can tell there were very few people who were on
| plans that passed those rates down to the consumer and I
| don't see any reason that poorer areas would have more
| people on that kind of plan.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _this needn 't be attributed to racism._
|
| I'd clarify this as "needed be attributed to intentional,
| malicious racism."
|
| A system can be racist in terms of outcome without having
| been intentionally designed to be racist. That still might be
| a problem. A sibling comment posited low-income areas are
| both more likely to have monitory residents and older
| infrastructure. That seems possible. But doesn't make it a
| non-issue.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| > A system can be racist in terms of outcome without having
| been intentionally designed to be racist.
|
| The problem with this line of thinking is it is so broad in
| its scope that it could literally be applied to anything
| where there isn't perfect uniformity of outcome. Just take
| out race:
|
| > A system can be ___ist in terms of outcome without having
| been intentionally designed to be ___ist.
|
| Consider these dubious outcome-based claims:
|
| Classist: poor people don't own cargo ships, therefore the
| shipping industry is classist.
|
| Sexist: spas attract more women than men, therefore the spa
| industry is sexist.
|
| Racist: most Ethiopian universities have majority black
| student populations, therefore most Ethiopian universities
| are racist.
|
| You get the idea. The question when assigning blame for
| ___ism shouldn't be _What is the apparent outcome?_ , but
| _What is the apparent intent?_ - and it 's only fair to
| assume good intentions in others until proven otherwise.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you are talking past each other. Sure, yes, any
| system may evince disproportionate outcomes for various
| demographic groups. I think your point is that that
| variation doesn't matter. In your examples, that is
| likely the case.
|
| But I think implicit in the parent comment is that there
| are some systems that have demographic variation _and
| where that variation significantly impacts the power,
| agency, or well-being of one of the groups._
|
| And for cases like that, real people are being harmed.
| They are unfairly not getting the same opportunity for
| success and liberty that other groups receive. That is a
| problem that anyone who cares about fairness should care
| to solve regardless of whether that's the intent of the
| system. It's not about blaming and shaming the architects
| of the system. It's simply a matter of something akin to
| good engineering to want systems that work well for all
| users.
|
| The fact that men don't go to spas as much ultimately
| doesn't matter. But if black people in Houston
| disportionately lost power _and froze to death_ that is
| an entirely different category of problem. We should not
| equate them.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I actually agree with most of your point here. The reason
| I objected is not because I think freezing to death is
| equally serious as a spa day. We have many serious
| problems that need to be solved quickly, including
| utility infrastructure. The very specific point I
| addressed, however, was that the claim that equal outcome
| itself is the singular measure of intent (and therefore
| some greater ___ism) is demonstrably false because it
| doesn't comport with the real world.
|
| Orthogonal to that issue is the one you raised, and that
| is whether some people (regardless of race, income level,
| etc.) need improved utility infrastructure. Manifestly,
| they do. But I care about that issue because they're
| human beings. I care because the government has a moral
| duty to provide the life-critical services it promised
| its citizens. Freezing in the winter is a serious problem
| regardless of how we draw the demographic boundaries
| around those freezing.
|
| Edit: It's for this reason I was frustrated in previous
| decades when politicians constantly used to say "do it
| for the children." No matter the issue, it was always
| "for the children." They still say it, but it's largely
| been replaced with "do it for the minorities." Why not
| just do it for people if it's a good idea? If it's a bad
| idea, let's skip it.
| munificent wrote:
| _> The very specific point I addressed, however, was that
| the claim that equal outcome itself is the singular
| measure of intent (and therefore some greater ___ism) is
| demonstrably false because it doesn 't comport with the
| real world._
|
| I don't think that's an accurate representation of the
| parent comment. They said, "A system _can_ be racist in
| terms of outcome without having been intentionally
| designed to be racist. " So it's clear they aren't
| implying that unequal outcomes are a singular measure of
| intent.
|
| Something I try to be more mindful of when commenting on
| social media is how my reply _steers_ the conversation. I
| think we all fall into the trap of "Oh, I agree with 90%
| of this but I'm going to correct this 10% bit here." In
| practice, that often derails the conversation completely
| away from the 90% that actually matters.
|
| I believe these online conversations can be a meaningful
| and important part of how we learn about and interact
| with the world, so I try to be mindful of the goal of the
| entire thread and not just whether my comment is
| technically correct or not.
|
| In this case here, I think your point detracts from the
| very important general point that there are many systems
| in the US that _are_ clearly, measurably racist against
| Black people. And quibbling about the intent of the
| current participants in that system takes attention and
| effort away from actually fixing anything.
|
| Imagine you're standing in your bathroom and raw sewage
| is firehosing out of the toilet all over the ceiling and
| walls. There is an interesting discussion to be had with
| your roommate about the relative merits of plastic versus
| copper pipes, temperature-dependent material fatiguing
| effects in winter-time, etc. But maybe that should be
| tabled until the matter at hand is addressed.
|
| Right now, Black people are jailed, assaulted, and killed
| at a significantly greater rate than other races in the
| US in large part because of persistent systems whose
| history stretches back to a time when its creators were
| deliberately, actively, intentionally racist.
|
| _> Why not just do it for people if it 's a good idea?
| If it's a bad idea, let's skip it. _
|
| Let's say you have a classroom where half the students
| are failing because the teachers mumbles and speaks
| really quickly and those students don't speak English as
| their first language. You might rightly say that, "Well,
| we want to improve the test scores of _all_ students,
| right? " So you do all sorts of study plans, etc. and
| raise the scores of the whole class by 10 points. Great.
| Everyone is better. But the scores of those ESL kids are
| still unfairly lower than the other kids because you
| deliberately ignored any _relative_ inequities by
| choosing to only focus on things that improved scores for
| _all_ kids.
| [deleted]
| camgunz wrote:
| The article disambiguates income pretty explicitly.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ohhhhhh wrote:
| thank you. big problem today is attributing racism in any
| situation where outcomes are perceived to be different
| because of weird contextual framing.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| This would be an example of systemic or long lasting results
| of racism. Having less dependable power means your foods more
| likely to spoil, your work is going to be disrupted, all
| kinds of things that are comparative disadvantages. And if
| these communities are artifacts of redlining, then it would
| be very obvious the clustering had racist origins.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _"Income status of areas did not appear to be a strong
| factor in the share of blackouts..." the study stated. "The
| presence of hospitals or police and fire stations--critical
| facilities--in a CBG [Census block group] reduces the chances
| of blackouts by around 0%-6%, a small difference that does
| not otherwise explain the disparity among communities."_
|
| from the article
| MR4D wrote:
| This is incorrect. I live in Houston and am intimately
| familiar with power in the state. The priorities are
| (generally speaking) as follows:
|
| 1 - Critical infrastructure (hospitals, etc);
|
| 2 - Interconnects on the T&D infrastructure;
|
| 3 - Population density.
|
| This is actually heavily regulated.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| US infrastructure hasn't improved in decades. All the top firms
| are now building new cities in the middle east and China. Parts
| of the US are stuck in the 1970 with nothing new built since
| then, and other parts are decaying back into third world
| infrastructure levels.
| Rapzid wrote:
| I don't buy their security excuse. Oh you don't want people to
| know you weren't cutting power to hospitals and other critical
| infrastructure buildings? No shit.
|
| There's something else they are hiding IMHO. Perhaps it includes
| answers to how the few million without power is either a BS
| number, or an explanation as to why my city alone(which owns a
| power company and had enough power generation for its
| citizens/owners) had 1-2/3 of the resident without power for
| days.. If only about 1/10th of the state was without power why
| did the rolling blackouts stop rolling for so many people? We
| essentially "took one for the team".
|
| My guess is they are hiding layers of yet-uncovered incompetence.
| bsder wrote:
| > My guess is they are hiding layers of yet-uncovered
| incompetence.
|
| I'd call you Captain Obvious(tm), but this is the Texas
| Laboratory for Shitty Government (to paraphrase Molly Ivins)
| we're talking about.
|
| Things they are likely hiding:
|
| 1) The grid is shit and has no control granularity.
|
| The granularity is sufficiently high that they couldn't
| disconnect enough load. Too many things are on the same
| circuits as the essential things. To fix this requires new
| power feeds (read: expensive copper wire) and the controls to
| run the smaller granularity. Nobody wants to to pony up the
| cash to fix this, so this will not get fixed.
|
| 2) Factories aren't connected with controls
|
| ERCOT couldn't summarily disconnect manufacturing plants with
| controls and had to fiddle with pricing games to finally force
| the plants to disconnect. The fact that people were without
| power but manufacturing plants still had power will make some
| people upset. But, don't worry, they'll still vote for
| Republicans.
|
| 3) The "critical" portions of the grid are now larger than the
| "non-critical"
|
| At least in the winter, residential simply just isn't pulling
| enough load to be able to stop a grid collapse. People have
| energy efficient residences. Consequently, essential things
| like your water treatment plant are consuming an amount of
| energy that takes a _lot_ of residences to match. The only way
| to fix this is to keep fuel and backup turbine generators on-
| site to allow the plant to keep working after it disconnects.
| This costs money, so nobody will do it.
|
| The whole _point_ of Texas not being on the grid is so that the
| pieces of the grid don 't have to spend money and be useful
| when things go to shit.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Note to people outside of the US who are worried about this:
|
| The rest of the world uses 3G/4G modems in their smart meters,
| they are usually also connected to a different APN than generic
| mobile data. Sometimes multiple meters are connected to a central
| hub with a physical wire (in apartment buildings for example).
| The hub is then the only gateway to the internet.
|
| The hack in question is only viable because of the weird way US
| smart meter collection is done.
|
| US Smart Meters use RF to shout out their values everywhere like
| an RF beacon. A power company vehicle drives around the
| neighbourhood, collecting the values, storing them and moves on.
|
| Source: I did smart metering software for L+G.
| aftbit wrote:
| But that's even worse, because then the meters are connected to
| the internet, rather than only accessible within a few block
| radius.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Check out yaantc's comment. tl;dr it's a completely separate
| network with no internet access. Basically a VLAN inside the
| cell network.
| h2odragon wrote:
| More info: Read Home Power Meters With RTL-SDR
| https://hackaday.com/2017/12/21/read-home-power-meters-with-...
| Faaak wrote:
| Landys&Gyr is a bit old school in this regard.
|
| Some countries (like France or Spain), use communications via
| PLC which are encrypted to the local transformer. They are then
| sent to the distributor via 4g/whatever
| gruez wrote:
| >US Smart Meters use RF to shout out their values everywhere
| like an RF beacon. A power company vehicle drives around the
| neighbourhood, collecting the values, storing them and moves
| on.
|
| I thought they transmitted over the power line?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication
| theshrike79 wrote:
| PLC does have its limits, mostly in range and bandwidth and
| it's highly dependent on the type of copper actually in the
| ground.
|
| But when it works, it's a lot more reliable than the RF
| abomination some networks are doing =)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The rest of the world uses 3G /4G modems in their smart
| meters_
|
| I'd suspect this is an exaggeration. I've been plenty of places
| in the world (yes, even Europe) with no cellular connectivity.
| So clearly "the rest of the world" is a generalization.
| joncrane wrote:
| Someone told me a long time ago that this arrangement was due
| to employment agreements with the so-called "meter maids." They
| originally wanted to fully automate it, but they didn't want to
| un-employ their fleet of meter readers, so the compromise was
| for the meter readers to simply drive down all the streets
| rather than go behind all the houses. The meter readers' jobs
| got a lot easier but they got to collect the same amount of
| money.
|
| I believe a union was involved but don't quote me on that.
|
| This is what someone told me, I am not presenting it as fact.
| If you know differently, please debunk.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I was at a local hacker space for a photo-op visit by the
| mayor. One of the things she talked about was the city's new
| smart power grid. Several members were upset about the fact
| that they were required to have these meters on their house,
| mostly because of how insecure they were. If I remember
| correctly, they were not password protected, and they had just
| turned off SSID broadcasting. One of the members couldn't help
| himself and showed her how trivial it was to access the meter's
| mesh network, which he demonstrated by pinging the meter at the
| mayors mansion. It was an awkward evening.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Do you mine stating which city this was in? I ask because
| I've a long-standing curiosity about which cities still
| maintain mayors' mansions (and governors' mansions). I know
| New York does, but I haven't run into it too many other
| places.
| kleton wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mayors%27_mansions_i
| n...
| canadianfella wrote:
| Mine?
| keanebean86 wrote:
| Arkansas had a really nice governor's mansion years ago.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/19/us/little-rock-journal-
| go...
| ortusdux wrote:
| Confusingly enough, the "mayor's house" belonged to the
| city's first mayor, and is now a museum and event space. It
| has a proper name, but the locals all know it as the mayors
| house. It is not a residence set aside for the current
| mayor.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > A power company vehicle drives around the neighbourhood,
| collecting the values, storing them and moves on.
|
| Maybe it used to work this way, or some uncommon types of
| meters work this way, but I've never seen them. The only ones
| I've seen broadcast to collectors that are usually on street
| lights, which are then connected to the power company's
| network. If you go to the wiki that's linked at the end of the
| article, they've even got pictures of one:
| https://wiki.recessim.com/view/Landis%2BGyr_Collector
|
| The connector on the front would have an antenna, and they're
| usually placed right before the light on the pole facing down.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I've lived in a couple (new) houses in Texas that all use the
| method described above. I see the utility trucks driving
| around pretty frequently, and have even had a guy get out and
| get closer to my meter until his handheld device beeped,
| apparently indicating he got the data.
| organsnyder wrote:
| It depends on your power company. My power company in Michigan
| uses cellular.
| makr17 wrote:
| From my desk in a residential but dense area I can see 60-70
| meters at any given time with a usb sdr.
|
| Water meters in our area do the same, but since it is near the
| street and below-grade I can only see a few of those.
|
| After having looked around for a while in disbelief, I now
| filter the capture from the SDR to just the ids of my meters.
| And I accept the fact that someone sufficiently-motivated could
| figure out when we're on vacation based on the broadcast
| consumption values...
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| The drive-by van stuff is old tech, I think most new metering
| platforms are on mesh networks now where there is some kind of
| central receiver connected via wire that all the meters
| communicate to. I don't know if they still use RF to do so, but
| the van driving is specifically considered very old fashioned
| these days.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| I've noticed that US utilities generally have a "dependency
| hierarchy": the telephone company is allowed to rely on the
| electrical utility, but not vice-versa. Water+sewer are another
| step up (and often have large, expensive diesel generators).
|
| I think most electrical utilities in the US would balk at being
| dependent on a cellular telephone company. Many of them won't
| even lease fiber from the telcos, insisting on stringing up
| their own instead.
| tkojames wrote:
| I think most places have upgraded to sending the RF signals to
| a local repeater and backhaul it. I know for pge they send the
| data hourly no trucks.
| blantonl wrote:
| _A power company vehicle drives around the neighborhood,
| collecting the values, storing them and moves on._
|
| Actually, most is collected now via Internet connected
| reception points typically installed on traffic lights and
| electrical poles strategically stationed near neighborhoods.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Still you've got RF meters shouting their statistics to
| everyone.
|
| The Germans would have a fit about that. It's illegal to
| measure electricity with under 24 hour granularity in Germany
| and IIRC in Switzerland. And there are really specific rules
| on what can be measured and how much of the data can be
| stored in the meter.
| dingosity wrote:
| FWIW, this is also how some organizations collected data from
| grow houses in the 2000s and early 2010s. Though they didn't
| broadcast SSIDs and wouldn't chat on the network unless they
| saw a specific sequence broadcast by the mobile station.
| consp wrote:
| This is also done for the calorimeters on my radiators for
| centrally provided heating. That is in Europe.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Have you tried modifying/pointing a microwave at your
| calorimeter exit sensor to heat it so your meter spins
| backwards?
|
| (Source: employer locked up the thermostat to keep us frigid
| to save money, but I just put an ice pack on top of it)
| consp wrote:
| My neighbors basically heat my home in the winter so that
| would wind it back below zero which they probably would not
| like. One of them is close to a refrigerator and actually
| measured heat output but the radiator is disconnected. I
| got my 60ct of charge back that year.
|
| You might not be able to wind them back (they are digital)
| but I'm pretty sure you can manipulate them with sufficient
| heat shielding something like your method to change the
| value.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Wait, what are they measuring? Shouldn't they measure
| incoming fluid temperature, outgoing fluid temperature,
| and volume?
|
| I thought the scam would be to heat the metal temperature
| probe inside the exit pipe faster than it rejected that
| heat (doable with an RF beam).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > A power company vehicle drives around the neighbourhood,
| collecting the values, storing them and moves on.
|
| I wonder how long it is until Uber or Amazon, or the postal
| service, strikes a deal with the power company to power this
| last mile sneakernet.
| mike_d wrote:
| Never because it doesn't work this way. All the smart meters
| I have seen form a peer-to-peer mesh and relay data until it
| hits a collector (every 8-10 blocks) on a telephone pole that
| has a connection to the power/water company.
| gregimba wrote:
| The reason we got smart meters in Austin, TX is because they
| weren't even recording readings just guessing what that reading
| should be based on historical data.
|
| https://texasmonitor.org/settlement-reached-on-austins-made-...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Interesting. The truck somehow reminds me of the radio signal
| tracking trucks anti-espionage offcials relied on back in WW2.
| api wrote:
| Sounds secure. I bet you could build a box to spoof your
| readings low and steal electricity.
| [deleted]
| orf wrote:
| > A power company vehicle drives around the neighbourhood,
| collecting the values, storing them and moves on.
|
| What the fuck
| amluto wrote:
| I am highly in favor of this type of self contained
| technology. The last thing we need is for the grid to become
| inadvertently dependent on the cell network, which is, in
| turn, dependent on the grid. If there's a multi-day outage
| that takes out the cell battery backups, the grid needs to be
| able to start up independently. This is hard enough without
| accidental networking dependencies.
|
| (I believe that at least some of the blatant inequity in the
| Texas blackouts was necessary for this type of reason. There
| were various critical facilities (gas pumping stations, for
| example) that, if shut down due to rolling blackouts, would
| have further reduced grid capacity.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the grid to become inadvertently dependent on the cell
| network, which is, in turn, dependent on the grid_
|
| The grid wouldn't be dependent on the cell network. Billing
| would.
| amluto wrote:
| A surprising number of modern smart meters contain relays
| that can be used to wirelessly disconnect customers. I
| don't know whether this feature is used for load shedding
| and/or startup, but it certainly could be.
|
| As an aside, there are distressing reports of meter-
| associated fires. These seem to come in two categories:
| installation issues (poor contact between meter and
| socket) and issues with the relay itself. The former is
| not specific to smart meters per se, but the latter is. A
| device that can safely switch 100-320A at 240V is not
| that cheap and not that small, and I suspect that some
| smart meter manufacturers try to cut costs.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I don't know whether this feature is used for load
| shedding and /or startup, but it certainly could be._
|
| The last two places I lived, it was.
|
| In the more recent one, residential customers who didn't
| opt in to the smart thermostat, which allows the power
| company to override your temperature settings in an
| emergency, could be automatically cut off from the grid
| in a crisis.
|
| In the older one, a factory I worked for was part of a
| program where they volunteered to be cut off from the
| grid remotely in the event of a power emergency. The
| factory got some kind of discount or rebate for being
| part of the program.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I'm sorry, the idea that utilities are putting underrated
| contactors in power meters is fearmongering hogshit.
|
| Cite a source or shut up.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| At least in my area they can. I have an agreement with
| the power company that they can shut off my A/C for up
| to, IIRC, 10 minutes at a time with some maximum total
| time off per day to load shed in times of high load. In
| return I get a discount on power during the summer
| months.
|
| Except for the first year where there was a bug that
| turned it off for an hour at a time, it's never been
| noticeable.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| This is almost certainly not a capability of your meter
| as such, though the meter might be used to pass data back
| and forth. Either your thermostat is being controlled
| (i.e., via changing setpoints) or there's a device
| somewhere in your HVAC wiring that the utility can
| communicate with. What is for sure not happening is
| remote connect/disconnect in the meter used to shed load.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Correct! I didn't think it was worthwhile making the
| distinction but there's a separate interface that the
| power company can control that switches the A/C. I think
| (been a while since I paid attention to it) that it only
| controls the compressor: the blower is still allowed to
| run independently.
| ableal wrote:
| Can confirm the first part - had the utility turn on a
| meter remotely, so they can turn it off too.
|
| Also, around here (Portugal) you're billed for the
| maximum power in your contract - it starts at 3.45 kVA, I
| think, with 6.9 and 10.35 levels commonly available (at
| 230 volts, that's 15, 30 or 45 amps). Used to be that a
| hardware circuit breaker enforced that limit, nowadays
| it's the meter cutting off supply in case of excess power
| draw.
|
| (No reports of fires that I've heard of.)
| RC_ITR wrote:
| The rumor on the Colonial Pipeline hacks isn't that core
| infrastructure was affected, it was that the billing
| system was.
|
| I think most utilities would act in the same way.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| That is a widely reported fact rather than a rumor.
| willis936 wrote:
| If I don't get billed for my power usage then I'm 100%
| craning my AC, as will everyone else.
| sfteus wrote:
| Smart meters still retain the total overall usage. Even
| if the power company doesn't read it for 3 months,
| they'll see the increased usage the next time they come
| by and apply it to your next bill.
| cesarb wrote:
| If modern smart meters are anything like classic
| mechanical meters, they have a counter of the total
| amount of power consumed so far, and the power company
| bills the difference between the current reading and the
| previous month's reading. Which means that, once the
| meter can be read again, you will be billed for all the
| power consumed in the meantime.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If I don 't get billed for my power usage then I'm
| 100% craning my AC, as will everyone else_
|
| Sorry, in what relevant scenario does the power company
| _never_ get paid?
|
| OP pointed out a potential feedback loop between the cell
| network going down and the grid failing. Are you
| suggesting everyone will crank up their AC when the
| network fails because the power company will have some
| difficulty collecting metering data _that day_?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It's a violation of privacy - it makes it that much easier
| for people to see how much electricity or water you
| consume. It isn't necessarily a secret, but it is not so
| easy to find out when you have to go to a meter directly.
| jakemauer wrote:
| It definitely is enough of a matter of privacy that PGE
| wouldn't reveal any details of the previous tenant's
| usage patterns when I called concerned about the amount
| of energy we were using in our new place. If it's too
| private to share in that context it shouldn't be blasted
| out unencrypted to anyone with an antenna. (Also I
| realize we're talking about Texas but I would assume/hope
| they have the same restrictions on sharing info as PGE.)
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| How could that possibly be a privacy concern?
|
| A lot more private information is already placed onto the
| street, in public: the contents of your garbage cans.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Now imagine a technology that scans the contents, listing
| the type, number, and mass of each item, and broadcasts
| it so that anyone driving by can instantly read it.
|
| It's not binary accessible v. non-accessible, it's level
| of effort.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| it isn't really. Most commercial meters that use this
| tech are encrypted. It is possible to obtain the key for
| your own meter but that's about it.
| tzs wrote:
| It often actually isn't hard for someone to find out even
| if you have one of the meters that has to be read by eye.
|
| It is quite common for those meters to be placed so that
| they are visible from a public street or alley, so that
| meter readers can read them without entering the
| property.
|
| Here is one electric company that talks about this in
| their meter reading FAQ [1].
|
| > The numbers on a electric meter are clearly visible
| from six to ten feet away. And, by noting the position of
| the dial indicators, an experienced meter reader can
| accurately read an electric meter from as far away as
| twenty feet. We also provide binoculars and/or monoculars
| for readings beyond the range where the dials are not
| clearly visible.
|
| [1] https://www.snopud.com/home/homefaqs/faqmtrread.ashx?
| p=1285
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The grid will work just fine without any cell connections.
|
| The connection in home smart meters is used mostly just for
| consumption data and maybe remote diagnostics. In some
| cases it's used for load management, but this requires a
| written contract with the user.
|
| Basically it goes "You let us turn off your
| AC/Furnace/other high load unit during load peaks and we'll
| give you a discount on your electric bill."
|
| Just the information on which meters can't be connected to
| (due to cell networks being down) gives the power company a
| bunch of data on where the actual fault is located.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Most countries don't have the weird and insane rating plan
| that Texas did. What I pay for water/gas/electricity
| doesn't fluctuate 500% from hour to hour.
| tgv wrote:
| It's like the meter man visiting your house, but now they no
| longer have to enter. Isn't it wonderful? If I lived in the
| US, I'd immediately try to hack up a small Arduino project to
| read out my neighbours' energy usage.
| amluto wrote:
| I think most of the modern gear uses ZigBee's publicly
| document smart energy protocols. It's encrypted.
| dperfect wrote:
| I do this with a cheap (~$20) USB RTL-SDR - no Arduino or
| custom electronics necessary. Of course, I only use it to
| monitor my own energy usage (electricity and gas) using
| rtlamr[1] and a script that periodically sends the data to
| InfluxDB, then displayed using Grafana.
|
| The result is a smart home energy monitor that doesn't
| require any clamps near the electrical panel, and it
| _exactly_ matches the usage for which I 'll be billed.
|
| [1] https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
| flatiron wrote:
| Crazy how easy that is. I bet within a year we hear about
| criminals using something like this to know when people
| leave their house for extended periods.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That repo is over 7 years old. It's exploitable, but I'm
| pretty convinced that this info has been out for many
| years.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2014/02/25/using-sdr-to-read-your-
| smart...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Use SDR networks to do it from afar.
|
| http://www.websdr.org/
| cronix wrote:
| I've never had a meter reader enter any house I've lived
| in, which would be somewhere around 15 different units. All
| gas/electrical/water meters are on the outside of the
| house/apartment whether they were smart meters or the
| traditional ones. Anyone can walk up to them and read them.
| The digital or analog dial readout is not
| locked/secured/obscured in any way.
| bserge wrote:
| And then promptly get bored. It's in the same category as
| running wifi deauth attacks - fun for 5 minutes.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Yep, as much as I love them Hak5 somehow still maintains
| a "fan base" for this kind of petty "hacking".
|
| Still, hat's off to Darren and Shannon!
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Or better still, kill your own meter and have something
| ping out a reading thats 100 times less expensive.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I live in a townhouse and our meters are outside next to
| where we park our cars. I can read my neighbors energy
| usage whenever I want.
|
| One uses more electricity than I do and the other less.
| winrid wrote:
| I suppose most of this infra was designed before cell towers
| were prominent enough.
| bdamm wrote:
| Cellular being backdoored by design might have something to
| do with it too. Although I think it really is just a $$$
| question; cellular providers didn't want utilities
| competing with handsets for service, so utilities built
| their own.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| During the time these meters were built Americans still
| paid to receive calls and SMS messages.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Well, looks like smart meters started appearing in US
| slightly later than e.g. here in Finland, around 2006-2007,
| so I'm not sure that explains the difference. Could be
| explained by lower mobile network coverage in U.S., I
| guess.
|
| US statistic:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/676472/number-of-
| smart-m...
|
| In 2005 in Finland about 7% of households had smart meters,
| with 80%+ coverage mandated by 2013 and actual coverage of
| 99.6% of under-63A meters in 2016 (Finnish sources: https:/
| /www.vttresearch.com/sites/default/files/julkaisut/mu... ht
| tps://tem.fi/documents/1410877/3481825/AMR+2.0+loppuraport.
| ..).
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What's special about 63A meters? That's low, but I guess
| nobody has electric heat/AC. I guess they're the ones
| that can be installed indoors?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| 3x 63A is the reasonable maximum a normal consumer would
| want at their house. Normal houses are around 3x 32A.
|
| Everything over that is a commercial building and they
| get billed with different rules and measurements due to
| the equipment they tend to have. Something about three
| phase engines and power phases in commercial lighting. I
| zoned out during those meetings :D
| archi42 wrote:
| Finland has 230V, so if you're from the US with 110V the
| low current rating might be confusing ;-) I'd also guess
| that in Finland they also run three phases into each
| house/unit (we do in Germany), meaning that's 3*63A =
| 189A. (Or just shy of 400A on a 110V grid). For us that's
| the default grid connection you get for your house.
|
| As for your guess: That's just a cultural thing I
| suppose. I've never seen outdoor meters around here.
| bluGill wrote:
| The US is 240 volt for power purposes. The 120 volt thing
| is just dividing that in half - the meters don't measure
| that. These days most US houses get 200 amp service, but
| in the past 30, 60, and 100 were all common (100 is still
| done). I know of a few houses with more than that, but
| those are not normal.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Naw, Canadian. Cool to have 3ph at home (even without the
| #1 thing that fails here because we don't have 3ph: a/c
| capacitors), but why's your industrial supply just 400V
| instead of a soup of 347V, 480V and 600V?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| We used to have meter readers running (literally) from house
| to house jotting down the numbers.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Yes but that's one data point at one singular moment in
| time being collected by one person. Smart meters
| continually broadcast a constant stream of data to anyone
| who cares to listen.
| bdamm wrote:
| Not all smart meters work the same way.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Ha, interesting, if there really are no security
| mitigations, I can wardrive 2 days in a row and figure
| out which houses have very low power consumption, and
| deduce from that they are empty and I can go rob them.
| Ha, maybe even figure out if some power consumption means
| they have security devices, or just a fridge and a
| cooler.
|
| And to make it worth my while I can just war-drive around
| the swanky areas of the city.
| josefresco wrote:
| Or, look for high usage and rob people for their crypto-
| mining rigs or pot farms! /s
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Might need to do some math for the pot farms. LEDs don't
| use that much electricity. Can set up a pretty big
| operation with 1-2kw.
|
| But the draw will be _very_ consistent.
| josefresco wrote:
| lol - I don't grow (obviously) but I know people who do
| (legally). They don't use LEDs, but I did use LED lights
| to grow some indoor veggies. From what I read (again I'm
| no expert) the low end LED stuff just doesn't cut it.
| Maybe there's a high-end LED market I'm unware of?
|
| If you could design an algorithm for your wardriver gear,
| you might be able to detect when growers switch from 18/4
| to 12/12 hour light cycles.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| From my understanding, commercial grows all use LEDs. You
| can roll your own and buy 50w+ LED modules, old CPU
| coolers and constant current inverters to get as high-end
| as you want.
|
| A lot of the all-in-one "grow lights" aren't well
| evaluated, but I'm sure some out there get the job done.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Or you can just war-drive around collecting the high-
| energy infra-violet emissions that escape through the
| walls at night, finding out which houses are not
| occupied! OMG!
|
| Also, please excuse my pedantry, but it is impossible to
| rob an unoccupied dwelling.
| variaga wrote:
| /me just now realizing that everything Bilbo did as a
| "burglar" was actually robbery.
| wyldfire wrote:
| If I had to guess, it's likely a response to an
| [unauthenticated] inquiry. If so it's probably not quite
| the same but effectively similar.
| toast0 wrote:
| Depends on the meters. My electric utility just replaced
| their old (circa 1999) smart meters which were one way
| broadcast with a new smart meter that's supposed to be
| two way capable. I didn't notice a lot of change at their
| data collection base station (which happens to be at the
| corner of my driveway), so I don't know if they already
| had a transmitter in addition to a receiver, or if it's
| small enough to fit in the existing equipment box or if
| they're using a different station.
| amiga wrote:
| The meters used in my area can be wirelessly shut down by
| any nearby power technician.
|
| They have vans with very visible PVC pipes mounted on the
| roof to interact with the meters.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The range is pretty limited, and there's generally
| nothing to stop me from either walking up to your house
| and reading your meter directly or from getting a pair of
| binoculars and doing so from your property line.
|
| The data was always "out in public" anyways.
| spockz wrote:
| How is this? I've never seen meters installed in the open
| with the display readable. Here in the Netherlands they
| are usually behind two doors. The front door and the door
| to the cabinet with all the meters and utility
| connections.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| They're just mounted on the side of the house like
| this[1] in the US at least. Power and natural gas, at
| least. Not sure if I've seen water.
|
| [1] https://images.app.goo.gl/H4abfrAyw85FSogq6
| mcguire wrote:
| Frequently attached to the incoming water line, usually
| under a metal cover between the water main under the
| street and the house.
| gumby wrote:
| Still have these folks here in Palo Alto.
| username90 wrote:
| Almost surely much cheaper short term than having a team of
| engineers and installers to fix the problem.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Different power companies use different smart meter tech, not
| all of which is easily readable.
|
| SDG&E uses encrypted Zigbee to transmit data. AFAIK, it has
| not been cracked.
| nicholashead wrote:
| I use a Rainforest https://www.rainforestautomation.com/
| device to read my own meter on SDG&E and it works, I think
| I had to go through an auth process though.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Indeed. I wonder if one could set up a fake transmitter that
| sends corrupt data (to lower one's own energy bill, hide a
| marijuana plantation, or to cause issues in a neighbor
| dispute), or what would happen if one would blanket jam the
| entire frequency.
| Majromax wrote:
| > or what would happen
|
| Charges for fraud (in the case of false data) and
| disruption to electrical service at the state level, and
| charges for unauthorized radio interference at the federal
| level.
| netr0ute wrote:
| This is the worst case scenario.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| But a realistic one, especially if it became common
| enough to want to crack down and make examples.
| bluGill wrote:
| Also not a very hard thing to investigate and track down
| for someone who is interested. I think a good portion of
| the readers here can design the equipment to do that.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is the worst case scenario._
|
| Worst case scenario isn't as far away as you might think.
| Consider that the FCC is pretty good at winning the cat-
| and-mouse game against pirate radio broadcasters. And
| those are people who can change their locations at will.
|
| How long do you think it would take to go from the power
| company noticing an anomaly to someone walking down the
| street with equipment to detect the source? A week,
| maybe? There's money at stake, and these aren't stupid
| people.
| meowster wrote:
| The power company would notice the discrepancy between the
| sum of reported energy use of the houses vs the actual
| energy used in that neighborhood and track it down.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| ... so you're saying that for ever kWh you add to your
| neighbor, you should remove from another house nearby?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And then when you shut it down and the meters report the
| real data they've been collecting all along, oy.
| handrous wrote:
| Decent chance you become more acquainted with the criminal
| justice system than you might have preferred.
| polynomial wrote:
| Related question, is there a law which requires you to
| send the used electrons back to them, after you're done
| using them?
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_conservation
| thrashh wrote:
| This is no different from tampering with your utility meter
| before they were smart, though?
| fastball wrote:
| Speaking of, is this not readily possible? What prevents
| people from doing this?
| jasonjayr wrote:
| The older meters had serial-numbered lockout tags that
| would break if you attempted to remove them, that
| prevented access to the mechanicals of the meter under
| the glass. I imagine that the gearing in the meter had
| some mechanism to prevent a simple 'rewind' attack.
|
| I also imagine (Hope?) that the power company would
| measure @ the pole level at some key points to make sure
| everything added up, and they have lots of data to help
| spot discrepancies.
| brewtide wrote:
| Rumor has it back in the day, a relatively strong, well
| placed magnet would certainly slow the rotation of the
| metering dial...
| sethhochberg wrote:
| ...though once this kind of attack became common, the
| utility meter manufacturers started adding anti-tamper
| features like hall effect sensors that record the
| presence of an unusually strong magnetic field near the
| meter equipment. You'd get some questions next time the
| meter reader came around and the tamper indicator was
| lit.
|
| Utilities have a lot of financial incentive to keep
| people from (at least blatantly) manipulating their
| billing.
| thrashh wrote:
| I wonder if you could screw with someone you don't like
| by putting a big fat magnet on their meter.
|
| Ofc with the new prevalence of home cameras, that would
| be risky now.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I wonder if they do any sort of audit of the amount of
| power used vs billed and, if so, at what scale. How long
| would it take them to identify the discrepancy? As long as
| it was pretty small-scale and not trying to hide a huge
| crypto-mining operation of something I suspect it would be
| a very long time before anyone figured it out.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| That depends on the power company. But it's quite trivial
| to compare your average consumption with similar users
| and find the outliers.
|
| That's how people who steal power get caught for example
| and grow-houses :)
|
| And it's also a useful tool for the consumers themselves
| to know if they are spending more/less/equal amounts of
| electricity as people with similar profiles.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I'm not sure what the source of your astonishment is. Water,
| gas, and power companies have been doing this for at least a
| decade.
|
| It's a good solution for a nation with a low population
| density. In higher density locations, meter readers and
| cellular connections are used.
| yaantc wrote:
| > The rest of the world uses 3G/4G modems in their smart
| meters, they are usually also connected to a different APN than
| generic mobile data.
|
| Yes. I guess it's worth stressing this, as it seems taken for
| granted by people experienced with cellular M2M/IoT but maybe
| not so well known in the general public.
|
| A cellular modem is first connected to an operator network. For
| mainstream subscriptions it is then connected from there to the
| Internet, making a device behind the modem reachable over the
| Internet, with all the security issues associated.
|
| But for business customers the telcos offer "private APN"
| subscriptions, with a VPN connection to the customer. Then the
| modems are connected to the customer and not to the internet,
| and the devices behind are not publicly reachable.
|
| Support of private APNs is part of cellular data since 2G GPRS,
| so from the very start. One can expect industrial cellular
| users to use them.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Mobile networks evolve fairly quickly. Spectrum is limited so
| mobile operators like to phase out older standards in favour
| of newer ones to make better use of their available spectrum.
|
| Upgrading the modem in a smart meter requires visiting every
| location you serve. That's not something a utility would like
| to do more than once every few decades. With 3G and 2G now
| being phased out, will utilities have to replace all their
| smart meters?
|
| https://hyphabit.io/2g-network-closure-uk/
| tzs wrote:
| > US Smart Meters use RF to shout out their values everywhere
| like an RF beacon. A power company vehicle drives around the
| neighbourhood, collecting the values, storing them and moves
| on.
|
| > Source: I did smart metering software for L+G.
|
| How long ago? I believe that was how the earliest meters that
| did not require someone to actually look at the dials worked,
| but many or most have moved on.
|
| For example the meters that Puget Sound Energy is in the middle
| of upgrading too (they did mine a couple months ago)
| (Landis+Gyr meter using their Gridstream RF system) form a mesh
| network to communicate with the mothership, which they describe
| thusly [1]:
|
| > At the center of the Gridstream RF Mesh solution is a true
| mesh, peer-to-peer network where each endpoint, device and
| router communicate in a peer-to-peer fashion, extending the
| coverage and reliability of the network. The asynchronous,
| multi-channel communication structure allows for increased data
| throughput and opens more paths to the data collector.
|
| > The self-healing network features dynamic routing messages
| that automatically adjust for changes to endpoints and the
| introduction of obstructions, such as foliage or new
| construction. System routers utilize one Watt of power to
| increase transmit distance and throughput, while data
| collectors support up to 25,000 meters, further minimizing
| infrastructure and maintenance costs.
|
| The documents tab on that page has PDFs with product sheets for
| the various components (endpoints, collectors, routers).
|
| The previous meters PSE used looked like traditional analog
| meters, but my account page at PSE showed my daily usage,
| updated daily, so they definitely had some kind of remote
| reading capability. I'm sure it was not someone driving around
| the neighborhood daily because it continued updating even
| whenever weather made it so it was very difficult to get a
| vehicle into my area for several days. I don't know if those
| were a mesh network--they were installed sometime in the very
| early 2000s I believe which seems a little early for that.
| Could have been cellular or power line networking. I know that
| both of those techniques have been used fairly widely--I just
| don't know what my particular meter was using.
|
| [1] https://www.landisgyr.com/product/gridstream-rf-2/
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The RF stuff is old, I didn't touch those that much.
| Americans had their own systems, did hear the stories though.
|
| Meshnets are the newer system, but still use RF and have
| their own issues (like car keyfobs in the same frequency
| either freezing completely or randomly opening/locking car
| doors :D)
| ljm wrote:
| I'm sure my UK-based smart meter is RF-based, but you can hook
| it up to your wifi to link your energy account to it.
|
| The metres themselves have a 10m range (one for gas, usually
| outside, another for leccy, usually inside) so a receiver
| outside of that won't function.
| dkarp wrote:
| In the UK, new smart meters can apparently function as a mesh
| network and forward readings through each other. They also use
| "Long Range Radio" instead of 2g/3g service in some locations.
|
| https://www.smartme.co.uk/technical.html
| certifiedloud wrote:
| Link to the repo mentioned in the video:
| https://github.com/BitBangingBytes/gr-smart_meters
| dylan604 wrote:
| "quietly emit data that shows how long businesses and residences
| have gone since their last power outage"
|
| who knew that 'uptime' would be such a security potential?
| tzs wrote:
| I wish that power companies were required to publish outage
| information, at least down to the neighborhood level.
|
| In my area the chance of an outage can vary considerably
| between one neighborhood and an adjacent neighborhood. It would
| be nice when considering buying a house to be able to know if
| it is one of the lower outage neighborhoods or not.
| deepserket wrote:
| yeah, this use case is really interesting
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's not terribly signal worthy imho. It's obvious what are
| critical loads: finance, healthcare, telecom (local CO or your
| local datacenter, comms), government services such as first
| responders and dispatch, water/sewer. This is yet another
| excuse and data obfuscation to hide incompetence and less than
| good faith decisions.
|
| ERCOT and utilities didn't even to know which circuits not to
| shed to keep gas pipeline infra (compressor stations) running
| during the spring winter event.
|
| Local permit data around electrical infra and ground truth from
| open data sources will take you far if you want to identify
| these loads. Folks answer a lot of questions they shouldn't if
| you roll up with a hard hat, clipboard, and hi viz vest from
| your non descript pickup truck if you're more bold.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It's actually a federal protected secret for some industries
| like data centres.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Uptime of data centres is protected by federal law? Which USC
| is that?
|
| Can't you just ping a couple of servers at a centre and get
| an extremely accurate readout of a data centre's uptime?
| dylan604 wrote:
| What if that server is a brand new shiny right out of the
| box? That's not very representative of the old and dull
| gray boxes that have been there for years.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| So, how much energy do these smart meters use?
|
| I'll assume since the user pays for it, there's no consideration
| for this cost of equipment that saves the utility money.
| pluto7777 wrote:
| I live five minutes away from my sister and my house gets cut
| three seconds the entire time. Meanwhile my sister's family had
| to huddle around the fireplace in their den for warmth. Does she
| live in the ghetto? Her neighborhood is nicer than mine. If I
| were to guess, it's because I live near the local police station
| and she doesn't. It's no grand mystery here. Stop tying to make
| it about inequality or some other BS.
| moate wrote:
| Sample size: 2.
|
| Nice neighborhoods were powered down. Poor neighborhoods were
| powered down. Maybe some had essential infrastructure. Maybe
| they didn't. There's a possibility that poor or minority
| majority neighborhoods were unfairly targeted. The inverse is
| also possible.
|
| The bottom line is, you and I both have NO idea who was
| affected, how, or how that decision was made. So stop trying to
| pretend racism or inequality can't exist. There literally is a
| grand mystery here because the companies responsible won't
| inform anyone.
|
| And yes, I fully accept that while it _can_ exist that doesn 't
| mean that it _does_ exist in this situation but you have to
| also accept that with incomplete data you can 't prove it
| doesn't.
| pluto7777 wrote:
| Just because I can't know every variable doesn't mean I'm
| going to dismiss what I've seen. Inner cities also have some
| of the best hospitals and infrastructure in the state while
| containing the most poor. It's just nonsense what you're
| preaching.
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