GCHQ intervenes to secure smart meters against hackers

GCHQ, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, has intervened to secure a new £11bn nationwide system of smart energy meters against hackers trying to crash the country’s power grids.

The agency built in additional security measures for the UK metering system after discovering glaring loopholes in meter designs in use abroad that it believed could pose a national security risk if rolled out in Britain.

The communication channel between each meter and the utilities operating them was designed to be encrypted. But the encryption key — the code used to unscramble the data each meter sends and receives — was the same for all of them.

If a hacker was able to crack the key, they could potentially gain control of every meter, GCHQ feared, according to a senior Whitehall official. That would allow them to “start blowing things up” the official said. For the full article click here 

 

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