US Officials Find ‘Rogue’ Communication Devices in Chinese Power Inverters

Remember “Volt Typhoon?” That was the name given to a group of Chinese hackers who were identified last year by Microsoft. Volt Typhoon was a state sponsored effort to gain access to US infrastructure including communications and utilities. At the time, FBI Director Christopher Wray said this about the effort.

“The fact is, the PRC’s targeting of our critical infrastructure is both broad and unrelenting,” he said. And, he added, the immense size—and expanding nature—of the CCP’s hacking program isn’t just aimed at stealing American intellectual property. “It’s using that mass, those numbers, to give itself the ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing,” he said.

Here we are just over a year later and US officials are now expressing concern about another element of our energy infrastructure: solar power inverters. Solar panels generate DC power but the electrical grid runs on AC power. A solar inverter converts the DC power into AC power compatible with the grid. Many of these power inverters are made in China and now officials are finding evidence that some of them have “rogue” communications devices built in to them.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said….

The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said…

Using the rogue communication devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure, and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.

“That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,” one of the people said.

So, how this might work is the US finds itself in a conflict with China. Say, for instance, China invades Taiwan and the US attempts to stop them. Suddenly, power grids around the country start misbehaving or fail completely. This is clearly the kind of attack on domestic infrastructure that Volt Typhoon was aimed at as well.

The unnamed US officials don’t name and names but we have a pretty clear idea which Chinese companies could be involved just based market share.

Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of inverters, accounting for 29% of shipments globally in 2022, followed by Chinese peers Sungrow and Ginlong Solis, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie…

While Huawei decided to leave the U.S. inverter market in 2019 – the year its 5G telecoms equipment was banned – it remains a dominant supplier elsewhere.

Europe is in potentially a much worse spot than the US.

Though discovered in the US, the presence of unregistered equipment has raised alarm in Europe.

The European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC), the body which represents the interests of some Europe-based PV companies, said that: “With over 200GW of Europe’s solar capacity relying on these inverters—equivalent to more than 200 nuclear power plants—the security risk is systemic.”…

Last week, PV Tech spoke to a leading European inverter manufacturer at the Intersolar Europe trade show in Munich, who said that the risk of cyberattacks to cut power supply from solar inverters was “real”, and that “it’s very clear inverter companies could switch off the grid if they want to.”

All Chinese companies are legal required to cooperate with CCP intelligence services, giving them anything they ask. So it’s not really a shock that this would happen. China has shown for years that it will attempt to exploit every opportunity to spy, steal our technology and gain control of our networks. At this point we really should just assume this is happening everywhere, all the time.