Black Hat Conference: How to bring down a power grid.

[whurlston]

Looks like "smart meters" aren't all that smart. I wish I could be there to see this demonstration:

New electricity meters being rolled out to millions of homes and businesses are riddled with security bugs that could bring down the power grid, according to a security researcher who plans to demonstrate several attacks at a security conference next month...

"We can switch off hundreds of thousands of homes potentially at the same time," Davis, who has spent the past few months analyzing a half-dozen smart meters, told The Reg. "That starts providing problems that the power company may not be able to gracefully deal with."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/12/...ity_risks/