One of the specters of cyber war is the possibility of the power grid being compromised, disabled, and/or destroyed by a cyber-attacker. A group of researchers showed this was possible, but they targeted a unique source of power: wind farms.
A handful of researchers pentested several different wind farms across the U.S. and broke into turbines from five different manufacturers. Their attacks revolved around physically compromising the turbines—which used easily picked or removed locks—and connecting Raspberry Pi computers to the control servers inside. The Pis were equipped with Wi-Fi transmitters, which the researchers used to remotely issue commands to the compromised turbines. They found that the turbines were usually in one large network, and they could gain complete control of all the turbines through one compromised turbine. They also were able to create worms that would propagate through the turbine network, use the turbine’s brakes to damage the turbines or shut off power generation, and manipulate network traffic so human controllers wouldn’t be alerted to potential issues. In other words, they could theoretically take down entire wind farms through one initial compromise.
As a target, wind farms have a set of unique strengths and weaknesses. Since individual turbines are spread out and tend to be placed in rural areas, it is difficult to physically secure them. Fortunately, most of the wind farms tested had very little Internet connectivity, but they were networked together with very little segregation in the network, allowing a compromise to affect all the turbines. And since there is little internal network authentication, commands sent from one turbine are considered authoritative to all the other turbines, allowing compromises to spread easily through the wind farm.
This is another example of an IoT device that, though it may not be connected to the Internet per se, is connected to a widely distributed network and shares common vulnerabilities with many other IoT devices. The fact that such vulnerabilities exist in multi-million wind turbines underscores how little security is valued in IoT devices. With wind farms, the repercussions of a compromise—power loss, damaged equipment, and so on—along with the potential threat actors (nation-state actors, business competitors, malicious insiders, etc.) makes securing them a significant security concern.
A handful of researchers pentested several different wind farms across the U.S. and broke into turbines from five different manufacturers. Their attacks revolved around physically compromising the turbines—which used easily picked or removed locks—and connecting Raspberry Pi computers to the control servers inside. The Pis were equipped with Wi-Fi transmitters, which the researchers used to remotely issue commands to the compromised turbines. They found that the turbines were usually in one large network, and they could gain complete control of all the turbines through one compromised turbine. They also were able to create worms that would propagate through the turbine network, use the turbine’s brakes to damage the turbines or shut off power generation, and manipulate network traffic so human controllers wouldn’t be alerted to potential issues. In other words, they could theoretically take down entire wind farms through one initial compromise.
As a target, wind farms have a set of unique strengths and weaknesses. Since individual turbines are spread out and tend to be placed in rural areas, it is difficult to physically secure them. Fortunately, most of the wind farms tested had very little Internet connectivity, but they were networked together with very little segregation in the network, allowing a compromise to affect all the turbines. And since there is little internal network authentication, commands sent from one turbine are considered authoritative to all the other turbines, allowing compromises to spread easily through the wind farm.
This is another example of an IoT device that, though it may not be connected to the Internet per se, is connected to a widely distributed network and shares common vulnerabilities with many other IoT devices. The fact that such vulnerabilities exist in multi-million wind turbines underscores how little security is valued in IoT devices. With wind farms, the repercussions of a compromise—power loss, damaged equipment, and so on—along with the potential threat actors (nation-state actors, business competitors, malicious insiders, etc.) makes securing them a significant security concern.
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