Solar Power System Vulnerabilities Could Result in Blackouts

Researchers from Forescout’s Vedere Labs disclosed 46 vulnerabilities affecting Sungrow, Growatt and SMA solar power systems — including inverters, communication dongles and cloud backends — that could allow remote code execution, account takeover and large-scale inverter hijacking. Exploitation at scale could be used to modulate power output and destabilize grid frequency, causing outages, financial damage, privacy breaches and enabling ransomware, prompting vendor patches and an FBI industry warning.