Here comes the sun -- along with the solar power vulnerabilities
We're always being encouraged to be greener in our energy usage these days and many people have turned to solar power as a means of doing their bit and reducing their bills.
But the inverter used to convert energy from solar panels to usable household electricity is usually an IoT device and could therefore be vulnerable. New research from Forescout analyzed equipment from six of the top 10 vendors of solar power systems worldwide: Huawei, Sungrow, Ginlong Solis, Growatt, GoodWe, and SMA. It has uncovered 46 new vulnerabilities across three of these inverter vendors, Sungrow, Growatt, and SMA.
In addition, Forescout's Vedere Labs finds that 80 percent of vulnerabilities in solar power systems disclosed in the last three years were classified as high or critical severity. These security weaknesses in the solar ecosystem have the potential to impact power grid stability, utility operations, and consumer data privacy.
"The collective impact of residential solar systems on grid reliability is too significant to ignore -- hospitals could lose access to critical equipment, families could go without heat in the winter or AC in a heatwave, and businesses could shut down," says Barry Mainz, Forescout CEO. "Threat actors increasingly target critical infrastructure, making it essential to take them seriously and secure solar inverter systems before vulnerabilities lead to real-world disruptions."
On average, 10 vulnerabilities on solar power systems have been disclosed each year over the past three years. Of the 93 previously disclosed vulnerabilities, 80 percent were classified as high or critical severity and 30 percent had the highest possible CVSS scores (9.8 to 10), meaning the attacker could take full control of an affected system.
The research finds Growatt inverters are susceptible to cloud-based takeover, allowing unauthorized access and control of a user's resources, solar plants, and devices. Sungrow inverters could be hijacked by harvesting communication dongle serial numbers through various insecure direct object references (IDORs), using hard-coded credentials found on the device and publishing messages that lead to remote code execution, and full takeover of the inverter.
By exploiting these weaknesses, cybercriminals could manipulate power generation at scale and trigger coordinated load-changing attacks to destabilize the grid -- potentially leading to emergency power measures, grid disconnections, or even blackouts.
"Solar power systems are rapidly becoming essential elements of power grids throughout the world, but persistent security flaws threaten both grid stability and national security," says Daniel dos Santos, head of research at Forescout Research -- Vedere Labs. "To mitigate these risks, owners of commercial installations should enforce strict security requirements when procuring solar equipment, conduct regular risk assessments, ensure full network visibility into these devices and segment them into sub-networks with continuous monitoring."
The full report is available from the Forescout site.
Image credit: Rainer Hendla/Dreamstime.com