He chops heat pumps and batteries for everyday
Varberg Energi decided to test the resilience of the electrical system after seeing how Russia directed cyberattacks against the Ukrainian electricity grid repeatedly the years before the full -scale invasion.
– We see that we have an increased threat to the energy system from foreign players. It is a reality and that is why we wanted to simulate this type of attack, in order to meet the hybrid warfare, says Mats Balkö, business area manager for innovation and sustainability at Varberg Energi.
He can’t go into all the details about the tests. But in short, they asked a security company to put their best hackers on attacking the company’s so -called virtual electricity grid, where hundreds of customers are connected with everything from large -scale battery storage, solar parks and wind turbines to different charging boxes and home batteries at private households. Anyone who gets past the security of such a system has every opportunity to disorder.
– The playing field for those who want to interfere with the electricity supply is considerably wider today than ten years ago. Most of it is in one way or another connected and there are more places to go, it is an Achilles heel, says Mats Balkö.
Fredrik Sandström is IT security manager at the security company Basalt, which helped Varberg Energi with the tests. He has performed similar « attacks » for several years. For safety and business reasons, he cannot go into what was good and bad in Varberg Energi’s system, but notes:
– Varberg Energi is at the forefront that you get started with such tests and you work with these things in a systematic way. They have come further than many others in that trip. But no one is impenetrable, there is not a customer that we have had that has no challenges in this area, says Fredrik Sandström.
He is surprised at how Simple it is often to take control of, for example, a very common heat pump that exists in hundreds of thousands of Swedish homes, but also more substantial systems that may exist in the industry or in other places.
– It has often been very easy to get into the systems we have tested, partly physically in place but also digital, says Fredrik Sandström.
Often it is the network segmentation that is too poor, he continues. That is, different networks or systems are interconnected without sufficient barriers between each other.
-In many cases it is enough with a phishing email that gets attached to the client computer so you can reach all the way.
What can an attacker do then?
– There are two different types of attackers. It may be foreign power that wants to remain with access to the environment without being noticed and then be able to turn off things or overload the electricity grid or the like.
-Or you have those who want quick money through Ransom Ware attacks, who tell a company that the heat pump or water or whatever it may be will not be turned on until a payment has been made, says Fredrik Sandström.
Mats Balkö emphasizes that Varberg Energi’s solution is safe but worries about the gaps that exist in many other places.
– It points to the importance of authorities and we as an energy company need to place equally high demands on security work, not least with the companies that sell everything from charging boxes to heat pumps and large batteries.
A foreign power may not extinguish Sweden by taking control of a number of villa households connected heat pumps, but it can create disorder, he reasoned.
– Although by definition you do not knock out large parts of the system, it can create concern, destabilization, and that is the attacker to a large extent, says Mats Balkö.
