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Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

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Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#61

Post by xoa »

kortilla wrote: post #27
nemosaltat wrote: post #6

Can’t believe Tesla would ship something with anything resembling a default password. At first glance, I assumed this would be a clear violation of the requirements of CA SB-327 (goes into effect Jan 1). Reread the bill, and it actually says: “The preprogrammed password is unique to each device manufactured.” If the default is based on the serial number, I guess it’s “unique” under the letter, but certainly not the s…

I disagree. The spirit of the law is to ensure that logins cannot be automated. Unless the serial number can be read over the internet without authentication, using it is completely within the spirit of the law.

>Unless the serial number can be read over the internet without authentication

As I said in my post below, I just checked mine and the full serial number is included in the device hostname. Since tons of regular PW installs are going to average joe residential sites which will heavily be using crappy outdated ISP provided routers with default passwords and entirely flat unmonitored LANs, possibly with infected machines to boot, it's fair to say that yes in fact the serial number will be able to be read over the internet without any authentication. Anyone who can see hostnames of devices on the LAN can get the whole serial.

Although I also doubt any such network will have any real rate limiting or notice any hammering either, and the serials look utterly trivial to brute force. So I'm not sure the fact that they're all broadcast for everyone even ultimately makes much difference.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#63

Post by generatorguy »

londons_explore wrote: post #59
vermilingua wrote: post #40

This is the mythical power-grid attack that people have been talking about since the concept of cyber-warfare was first dreamt up. It’s lucky we caught this now, before there are enough PowerWalls to seriously destabilise the grid if this attack were to occur.

Rate of Change of Frequency protection (ROCOF) in embedded storage and generation systems is what will kill the grid in a massive cascading failure. ROCOF works well to keep things safe when only a small percentage of the grid demand is met by residential solar/powerwalls. As soon as any significant proportion is residential solar (and thats already the case in some countries at some times of day) it acts as a cascad…

When home renewable reaches a level of penetration where simultaneous loss would be in excess of spinning reserve any further embedded generation will be regulated in such a way as to not contribute to the problem. For instance by prohibiting exporting energy back to the system, and separating your house from the system if the frequency is falling quickly and your embedded generation is going to trip,in order to avoid the simultaneous load step due to the loss of all the embedded generation they could just disconnect it all. And in that case the embedded generation can continue to feed your house if it can operate an isolated network.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#65

Post by generatorguy »

astronautjones wrote: post #43
propercoil wrote: post #22

So many people like to nitpick when it comes to Tesla, It reminds me of the Apple critics in the early days of the iphone. They assume Tesla should have the highest standard and be absolutely impeccable with all their products. Just don't buy it if you don't like it. Let the rest of us enjoy a sustainable future with insanely safe full self-driving electric cars.

this is an exploit that allows an attacker to disrupt the electrical grid - even if it's only to the substation, that effects all of your neighbors that didn't encourage you to blindly support Tesla's endeavour. it's highly irresponsible to have this kind of control behind such a trivial login on something that connects to your power lines, something extremely dangerous. far from a "nitpick"

It doesn’t disrupt the grid anymore than turning a heater on and off.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#66

Post by newnewpdro »

mdorazio wrote: post #2

Did they even try to submit these issues to Tesla? They have a bug bounty program and have been reasonably good about patching issues in vehicle software. If not, this is pretty irresponsible disclosure.

These issues seem fairly obvious to me. Anyone interested in powerwall vulnerabilities would find them trivially.

In this case I think the value is in embarrassing Tesla for their gross negligence so they do better in this area before shipping.

When you disclose such things quietly with the vendor, it mostly just saves their face.

Not everyone values saving Tesla's face.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#67

Post by peteradio »

generatorguy wrote: post #63
londons_explore wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rate of Change of Frequency protection (ROCOF) in embedded storage and generation systems is what will kill the grid in a massive cascading failure. ROCOF works well to keep things safe when only a small percentage of the grid demand is met by residential solar/powerwalls. As soon as any significant proportion is residential solar (and thats already the case in some countries at some times of day) it acts as a cascad…

When home renewable reaches a level of penetration where simultaneous loss would be in excess of spinning reserve any further embedded generation will be regulated in such a way as to not contribute to the problem. For instance by prohibiting exporting energy back to the system, and separating your house from the system if the frequency is falling quickly and your embedded generation is going to trip,in order to avoi…

Isn't that the problem, that every home device will disconnect at roughly the same time? Leaving the atrophied generators to take up far too much slack.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#68

Post by londons_explore »

chance_state wrote: post #49
vermilingua wrote: post #40

This is the mythical power-grid attack that people have been talking about since the concept of cyber-warfare was first dreamt up. It’s lucky we caught this now, before there are enough PowerWalls to seriously destabilise the grid if this attack were to occur.

> This is the mythical power-grid attack that people have been talking about since the concept of cyber-warfare was first dreamt up. > It’s lucky we caught this now, before there are enough PowerWalls to seriously destabilise the grid if this attack were to occur. I could be misunderstanding you, but do you seriously think that there are not more destabilizing attacks already available? From my reading the US power g…

Any power grid is very vulnerable to attack. Anyone who can cause a sudden surge in demand can take a power grid down.

If you can make power usage unexpectedly go up by more than ~10% within a minute, most power grids will fail.

I'm struggling to think of any companies who could do that though... Someone with malicious access to teslas servers couldn't even do that... For example, instruct all plugged in tesla cars to start charging all at once. Assume 400k tesla cars are plugged in overnight, with an average 10kw charge ability. That means tesla could add 4 gigawatts to the grid demand instantly, which is only 0.4% of the USA's ~1TW generation capacity.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#69

Post by paulie_a »

vermilingua wrote: post #40

This is the mythical power-grid attack that people have been talking about since the concept of cyber-warfare was first dreamt up. It’s lucky we caught this now, before there are enough PowerWalls to seriously destabilise the grid if this attack were to occur.

I wouldn't call it mythical. A government red team completely owned our power grid quite a while ago as a test.

Re: Tesla PowerWall 2 Hack

#70

Post by peteradio »

mdorazio wrote: post #2

Did they even try to submit these issues to Tesla? They have a bug bounty program and have been reasonably good about patching issues in vehicle software. If not, this is pretty irresponsible disclosure.

What is the bug exactly? Its not like there is some complex sequence to trigger any of this shit, its just sitting there because it's a terrible unsafe design. This is more of a critique of design than any zero day bug post. This is all in the goddamn manual.
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