Hackers Reportedly Target Wind-Energy Companies In Europe (pcmag.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: European wind-energy companies have reportedly been targeted by hackers -- or been affected by cyberattacks on their suppliers -- since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. The Wall Street Journal reports that Nordex SE and Deutsche Windtechnik AG have both reported cyber incidents over the last few months. A third German company, Enercon GmbH, told the Journal it was "collateral damage" when Viasat was hacked at the start of the invasion.
The severity of the hacks varies. Nordex SE had to shut down its IT systems; Deutsche Windtechnik AG couldn't remotely control about 2,000 turbines for at least a day; and Enercon GmbH lost remote access to some 5,800 turbines because of the Viasat hack. The notorious Conti ransomware gang has reportedly claimed responsibility for the March hack of Nordex SE; the Journal says that security experts are currently investigating the possibility that it was involved with the April hack of Deutsche Windtechnik AG as well.
The severity of the hacks varies. Nordex SE had to shut down its IT systems; Deutsche Windtechnik AG couldn't remotely control about 2,000 turbines for at least a day; and Enercon GmbH lost remote access to some 5,800 turbines because of the Viasat hack. The notorious Conti ransomware gang has reportedly claimed responsibility for the March hack of Nordex SE; the Journal says that security experts are currently investigating the possibility that it was involved with the April hack of Deutsche Windtechnik AG as well.
Competition (Score:2)
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You're saying that the Russians broke wind in Europe?
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Obviously...they hacked the wind turbines to now act as giant fans, so they can control the wind and weather.
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Naw. It's all that hot air from Lavrov who keeps spouting, "Nuclear war! Nuclear war!", as if that means anything.
Breaking wind (Score:3)
You're saying that the Russians broke wind in Europe?
Given all the natural gas (mostly methane) they've been supplying to Germany, they've been breaking wind in Europe for quite some time now. B-)
No, literally! You may recall that the price paid to the German wind farm operators varies depending on the grid conditions - mainly driven by load and other generation. The large amounts of electric power generated using natural gas imported from Russia have depressed the price, and occasionally driven it negat
Its been asked so many times.... (Score:2)
.... but here we go again. Why don't companies air gap their critical infrastructure? The only way these should be hackable is if a someone physically intercepted the control lines to them. They should NOT be able to do it from the public internet. No firewall is 100% full proof whether wired or wifi. Don't CIOs ever learn this?
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Don't CIOs ever learn this?
But... CIOs need to access the main controls from home!
Re:Its been asked so many times.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's more profitable to spread out the administration remotely than have people on site for all tasks.
If we want that to happen for critical infrastructure like this it will have to be regulated and enforced.
Every story we hear about these hacks shows the companies are not going to do it themselves. If the cost/benefit for them to do it that way was there it would have been done.
Re:Its been asked so many times.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the cost/benefit for them to do it that way was there it would have been done.
They haven't done it because it is not worth doing. The network connection to the turbines went down, but the turbines continued to turn and feed power into the grid.
At worst, they may have issues with billing, but way less than 1% of their power production was affected.
The GPP's solution to the loss of the network is to "air gap" the systems, so there is no network. That doesn't solve anything.
Re: Its been asked so many times.... (Score:2)
So you cant have air gapped networks? Are you new to IT?
Re:Its been asked so many times.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Air gap access to thousands of wind turbines? You can do MPLS and you can do VPN and you can do dedicated APN on mobile networks, but none of that is physically air gapped. It is all using the same infrastructure that the Internet runs on.
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Not necessarily. One can have a private network using public standards and mainstream hardware. All interfacing at the point power joins the grid. One can even set it so that certain items can be READ ONLY.
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Re: Its been asked so many times.... (Score:2)
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Re: Its been asked so many times.... (Score:2)
Try to put your brain into gear first before replying next time.
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Centralized anything is a bad idea (Score:2)
This is why centralized energy is a bad idea. If your only source of energy is electricity which can be shut off at the flip of a switch, virtual or physical, then you are at the whim of those who would flip that switch for their own reasons. Whether it's a hacker group or a government that wants to punish you or merely make your life so difficult that you have to conform, there is no difference.
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For this case, we can encourage citizens to implement wind/solar/bicycle-powered electric energy production and forbid them from selling excess energy to the public power grid. It shouldn't pollute too much more than that "home iron smelter" thing China was into back in the mid-20
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I wouldn't say that centralization is necessarily always a bad idea, but with energy, even if you're not worried about people switching it off for nefarious reasons, you should be worried about nature switching it off through semi-natural disasters or normal component wear. For renewable energy there's no reason to put many eggs in one basket.
Centralization does make sense for any energy generation that involves combustion since it allows more effective emissions control and carbon capture to be placed at t
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Centralization does make sense for any energy generation that involves combustion since it allows more effective emissions control and carbon capture to be placed at the source.
Perhaps more importantly: Large combustion systems can be run far more efficiently, fuel-to-total-output wise, than small ones, more than paying back the transmission losses and costs.
Nevertheless, small fuel-based generation as a very occasionally used backup in a renewable system drastically improves its reliability as a standalon
Please tell me this didn't surprise anybody... (Score:2)
Another argument that WW III is already started. (Score:3)
...and please tell me we're doing the same thing to Russia...
I suspect state-level crack attacks on Russia's energy grid might be something western governments are avoiding, as part of the "Don't escalate into full-on world war!" tapdance.
Which raises the question: Why aren't these attacks on western - especially NATO - countries' energy grids and networking infrastructure an "Attack on one [that] is an attack on all.", and already activating NATO's Article 5?
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because nobody wants a fucking world war ...
It only takes one side to start a war.
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Russia is losing badly, Renewables are winning (Score:2)
Hence the attacks on all forms of renewable energy that threaten Russia's ever shrinking GDP
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Does that mean all nuclear plants will be the next target? Lends their threat of nuclear war in a new light.
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the cooling aspect of water intake for such plants is a concern