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The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

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Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#251

Post by Aachen »

lucianbr wrote: post #246
Aachen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On which planet does the regular occurrence of one phenomenon disprove the regular occurrence of another? It can both be true that weather is locally different on most days but coincides to be universally cloudless on a fair number of hours every late-summer month (easily within a reasonable waiting time for an attacker)

The Netherlands covers 41,850 km2. I don't agree this size is small enough to cause the weather to be likely the same everywhere. Whatever qualifier and quantifier juggling you're trying to do is beside the point. > When it is sunny in the netherlands, it is likely sunny everywhere in NL because of how small the country is. Nowhere there is the qualifier "a fair number of hours every late summer month". If you add ar…

Fair enough, in my head I guess that was a given because that's the sort of attack being talked about but that could have been specified better indeed

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#254

Post by automatic6131 »

huijzer wrote: post #243
automatic6131 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking exponential improvements for granted. Only one human endeavour (ever) has made exponential gains for a long period, that of silicon lithography. And even that ended in the last decade. The reason I say "always underestimate" is the obvious one. The easy problems are solved first, then the harder ones take longer because they're harder. So that's fantastic that battery production scaled up. Only a fool w…

That’s not true. Exponentials are everywhere. They can often go for a long time. Even silicon is still going strong if you focus on FLOPS per dollar. Other examples are cruise ship sizes, US GDP per capita, or Microsoft stock price. The point really is this: go back in time to some of these things a few decades years ago. You would say: “How is this even possible? This is crazy. This will probably plateau soon. This…

Fyi, monetary values of things, like US GDP or stock prices, can be exponential forever, if we wanted, because they're socially constructed.

I am talking about real things. Cruise ship sizes improved dramatically but... actually linearly? There won't be 1,000,000 GT cruise ships in 2050. Or 60.

You have to use specific measurements like FLOPS/$ to keep moore's law alive, because the focus has been only on a certain kind of FLOP (the fp32 MAC for graphics, or perhaps the INT8/FP8 in recent years). Because in general, it's dead. It's more performance, for more money. Because lithography is really hard, harder now than ever (and water is wet).

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#255

Post by lll-o-lll »

applied_heat wrote: post #244
jpc0 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you wantes was to kill the power I don't see the difference... Sure the repair is easier/quicker but the economic damage was already done...

The lead time on a transformer that size is probably a year, so a year long outage has a lot more damage than a 2 week outage

Would the switch on the transformer possibly be software controlled? (By software, I am wondering about firmware on a device reading a sensor, as opposed to a physical mechanism). I don’t know enough about the internals of these things, but I wonder if you could maliciously overwrite firmware, whether certain protections could be made to fail.

I’m going to assume this kind of thing is likely covered in FMEA and such, so is unlikely.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#256

Post by applied_heat »

shermantanktop wrote: post #245
applied_heat wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, electrical engineering teaches you a lot of the math,physics,and control systems theory, and power systems that guides the design and operating characteristic of power systems devices like inverters. Sure EE doesn’t help with cybersecurity per se, but inverters and solar panels existed 20 years ago so I feel like my 20 year old electrical engineering degree is pretty darn relevant

This article is about IT security for power systems. Ohm’s Law won’t help.

Fair enough, the parent comment mentioned “solar tech” and old pieces of paper and silly me didn’t realize that the power systems side works is a given and the problem is essentially hooking it up to computers and the internet to gain a modicum of convenience.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#257

Post by idiotsecant »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #255
applied_heat wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lead time on a transformer that size is probably a year, so a year long outage has a lot more damage than a 2 week outage

Would the switch on the transformer possibly be software controlled? (By software, I am wondering about firmware on a device reading a sensor, as opposed to a physical mechanism). I don’t know enough about the internals of these things, but I wonder if you could maliciously overwrite firmware, whether certain protections could be made to fail. I’m going to assume this kind of thing is likely covered in FMEA and such,…

It would be an input to a relay protection system which is technically software controlled most of the time but quite secure.

Re: The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

#258

Post by kwhitefoot »

cesarb wrote: post #113
kwhitefoot wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utility company fuse between the property and the 240 V distribution system should prevent overcurrent. If the frequency or phase of the inverter is wrong the inverter might die first unless the network is already down. There isn't really any practical way to prevent overvoltage though. So a rogue controller in charge of all the solar systems in a street might be able to do quite a lot of damage to consumer devic…

> The utility company fuse between the property and the 240 V distribution system should prevent overcurrent. If the frequency or phase of the inverter is wrong the inverter might die first unless the network is already down. To put it more simply: if the phase is wrong, the effect is the same as a short circuit, which fuses and circuit breakers protect against. If the frequency is wrong, the phase will become wrong…

A surge protector dimensioned for protection against lightning induced overvoltages will probably not trip at the level of overvoltage that could be produced by an ordinary inverter.
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