An ethical hacker from the Netherlands has warned that solar panels installed in Europe are vulnerable to cyberattacks from hostile nations.

According to Euractiv, the Dutch white hat hacker inadvertently revealed this weakness that could grant control of millions of smart solar panel systems to adversaries. Investigative outlet Follow The Money further disclosed that the hacker managed to gain access to these systems using a backdoor.

The hacker’s discovery bolstered the findings of a 2023 study by the Dutch Authority for Digital Infrastructure (RDI) warning that many solar panel converters (SPCs) did not meet cybersecurity requirements. SPCs ensure that the sunlight captured by solar panels can be converted into electricity.

The RDI, which is tasked with maintaining and safeguarding Dutch digital infrastructure, analyzed nine SPC for the 2023 study. Five of these showed signs of risk, leading the agency to issue advice to the makers of these converters. The RDI told these companies to improve their security to meet legal requirements, which will apply from Aug. 1 onward.

“Many converters cause interference and are cyber insecure. This causes wireless devices nearby, for example, to fail or malfunction and solar panel installations can be hacked,” the study reads. It also found that not one of the analyzed solar panel converters met the requirements for cybersecurity, as they are “easily hacked, remotely disabled or used for DDoS [distributed denial of service] attacks.”

John Derksen, equipment director at the RDI, said attacks against Dutch solar panel infrastructure have become more realistic “given our current geopolitical situation” since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“If you launch an organized action on that, turning off all the converters at once and turning them on again, you will get spikes in your power grid. That can topple the power grid. Then the whole Netherlands could run out of power,” he warned.

Hacker’s discovery highlights need to SECURE the power grid

Euractiv noted that in 2022, solar energy provided roughly 14 percent of the Netherlands’ energy supply. The share of solar power in the European grid has surged from one percent in 2010 to nine percent last year. But alongside this rise, the disruptive potential of a cyberattack on solar panels has also grown.

Given this, European Union industry association SolarPower Europe reiterated in a statement that the continent “needs more robust cybersecurity rules for distributed energy sources.” SolarPower Europe’s Deputy CEO Dries Acke also stressed following the Dutch hacker’s discovery: “Devices that can be centrally coordinated or managed – for example, aggregated rooftop solar installations – must be subject to an EU or nationally authorized layer of monitoring.”

A July 24 report by the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) found that the union is ill-prepared for a coordinated attack on its energy infrastructure, whether by a foreign state or by malicious entities within. The ENISA report noted that with electricity being so essential, any attack on Europe “attracts considerable pre-positioning activity by advanced threat actors” in the power sector should they aim at “executing a destructive attack.”

Even the Solar Energy Technologies Office, which is under the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, warned of such dangers. According to the office, solar energy technologies such as inverters and control devices designed to help manage the electric power grid are at risk of being targeted by cyberattacks. Such devices are at higher risk of being impacted when connected to the internet, it added.

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Watch this clip for homeowners about protecting solar panels ahead of an EMP attack.

This video is from the OneHouseOffTheGrid.com channel on Brighteon.com.

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Sources include:

ClimateDepot.com

Euractiv.com 1

Euractiv.com 2

Energy.gov

Brighteon.com