http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/09/smart_meter_privacy_oops/ By John Leyden The Register 9th January 2012 White-hat hackers have exposed the privacy shortcomings of smart meter technology. The researchers said German firm Discovergy apparently allowed information gathered by its smart meters to travel over an insecure link to its servers. The information – which could be intercepted – apparently could be interpreted to reveal not only whether or not users happened to be at home and consuming electricity at the time but even what film they were watching, based on the fingerprint of power usage. The many surprising secrets revealed by some smart meter set-ups were revealed during a presentation by researchers Dario Carluccio and Stephan Brinkhaus at the 28th Chaos Computing Congress (28c3) hacker conference in Berlin late last month. During the talk, entitled, Smart Hacking for Privacy (YouTube video here), the researchers explained that they came across numerous security and privacy-related issues after signing up with the smart electricity meter service supplied by Discovergy. Because Discovergy's website's SSL certificate was misconfigured, the meters failed to send data over a secure, encrypted link - contrary to claims Discovergy made at the time before the presentation. This meant that confidential electricity consumption data was sent in clear text. Because meter readings were sent in clear text, the researchers were able to intercept and send back forged (incorrect) meter readings back to Discovergy. [...] _____________________________________________________ Did a friend send you this article? Make it your New Year's Resolution to subscribe to InfoSec News! http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isnReceived on Mon Jan 09 2012 - 23:48:15 PST
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