“Are smart meters the end-all?” or “How I learned to love the IoT”

It seems as though technology continually is making further inroads into our lives, step by step. Beginning from the 1980’s to our current time, the computer in theory was supposed to make our existence easier and less stressful. There was supposed to be a four day work week, as we would become so efficient that is all we would need to get all of the work done. What this did instead was make us work more, as we could get more work done now. We were supposed to be paperless, as we could scan everything into the system, so there would not be a need for paper to be used. Here the attorneys got involved stating that we could not prove the digital signature was used by the person alleged to have used the signature, and the paper could not go to the wayside.
On other fronts, technology has paid off for the users. All we have to do is look to our smart phone, USB, and improved satellites. If we want to know exactly where we are standing on the planet, there is an app for that.

 The current hardware innovations are part of the internet of things (IoT). An entertaining example of this as of late is the light bulbs that flash different colors based on the user’s parameters. For instance, if the Detroit Lions win their football game, this may bet set to flash blue. This is in the pipeline to become yet more mainstream. The latest iteration involves energy meters. We are all familiar with the usual meter on the side of the house or on the apartment building with the glass globe (looking like Robot from Lost in Space on its side), with the dials spinning. In the late summer, the spinning dials appear to be moving near the speed of light as our air conditioners are running.

 Hardware
Visually and physically the meter is still in a round-ish housing and attached to the dwelling. The prior meters required the energy worker to walk around once a month and read the numbers. The new smart meters are digital and automatically gather the data and transmits this to the electric company. There would be no person walking around your property leaving footprints in the snow. The structure and housing itself does have a few variants in size, but these are moderately the same. The fundamental, pertinent change involves the software. This allows the meter to communicate and send various data to the electric company.

 Benefits
Clearly there is a benefit to someone or some entity. Otherwise the expense would not have been incurred for the R&D. Big business does not need to spend the funds on a shiny new toy. The primary beneficiary is the electric company. They no longer will have to employ the people to walk around and read the meters for everyone. This would cut the expenses for labor and the associated overhead. The new meters monitor the usage per household, and subsequently per neighborhood, county, etc. Big data would be so happy with this. With the quicker monitoring comes the ability to react to geographic power needs faster. If an area has a higher need for power, the situation can be monitored so other areas where the consumption is less can have this transferred. This is much like loan balancing on the servers.

 Not so Beneficial
This prima facie sounds great. Allegedly this benefits the electric company and society, and the electricity should be less costly. Everything comes at a cost. There still is no free lunch. All of the attributes are not good for the consumers. A primary concern has been its security and privacy. The hardware itself is hack-able with little effort. This is unnerving at best. Also the information on the personal usage for the residence and by extension other information can be accessed by others. A thief could monitor your usage and if it appears the usage is well below the baseline for two or three days, could believe you are on vacation and break into your residence.

 Hack-able
The hardware is attached to you home, condo, duplex, apartment building on the outside of the structure. Anyone could simply walk up and look at the different access points to hack on the hardware. If it is during the day during the work week, no one would probably even notice. If someone were to walk up to this person, it would not be that difficult to social engineer your way out of this. The trespasser could not only get the raw usage data, but also any other data the hardware holds (e.g. account number).

  This sounds a bit far-fetched. It does not seem likely that a piece of equipment that records your electrical usage would be that much of a detriment. Well it happened. Beginning in 2009 there were power thefts throughout Puerto Rico. This became a significant issue and the FBI began investigating the thefts. The FBI believed this was due to the “new and improved” smart meters being deployed. It appeared, from the investigation, that people previously employed by the company that manufactured the meters and current employees of the utility company were involved with the theft.
The people were charging for the unlawful services $300-$1,000 for residential customers and $3,000 for the commercial meters. Some of the estimates were the utility company lost millions in revenue due to this. This was done by using an optical converter device attached to a laptop and software downloaded from the internet. There are several tools that can do this. One open source tool to do this is the Termineter. This also uses as the access point the optical interface. The hardware for this costs $300-$400. To fully implement this does not take a significant capital outlay. In essence the tool merely changes the ratio of how the meter records the electricity used.
The person did not have to open the meter, cut the metal band, or anything physical. They just had to walk to this with their laptop and an optical converter device. These is not complicated or even a two-step process.

 In short…
Overall, technology is our friend. This may give us a temporary headache, but in the long run this makes our life easier. The smart meter is one such item. It makes sense to use this item. The more data the electric company has access to, the better they can plan for the usage. This improves their operations, which translates into electrical savings for the consumer. With the good comes the bad. The software written to manipulate the smart meter was coded more with the focus being on how to operate and record the electrical usage, versus security. The level of security with this has already proven to be disastrous financially for at least one utility. With the promulgation of the open source software and relatively low cost of the hardware to hack the smart meter, there will be issues until there are patches written to rid the system openings for anyone to get into.

For further thoughts
Geib, A. (July 15, 2012). How privacy-conscious consumers are fooling, hacking smart meters. Retrieved 9/8/14 from http://www.naturalnews.com/036476_smart_meters_hacking_priv….
Kumar, M. (July 22, 2012). Open source smart meter hacking framework can hack into the power grid. Retrieved 9/8/14 from http://thehackernews.com/…/open-source-smart-meter-hacking.….
Protalinski, E. (July 22, 2012). Smart meter hacking tool released. Retrieved 9/8/14 from http://www.zdnet.com/smart-meter-hacking-tool-released-700…/.
Sunshine, W.L. (n.d.). Pros and cons of smart meters. Retrieved 9/8/14 from http://energy.about.comp/…/Pros-And-Cons-of-Smart-Meters.htm.
Tweed, K. (April 10, 2012). FBI finds smart meter hacking surprisingly easy. Retrieved 9/8/14 from http://www.greentechmedia.com/…/fbi-finds-smart-meter-hacki….