Smart Appliance Botnet Could Take Down the Grid

The yin and yang of technological innovation is remote connectivity.  This is what makes appliances “smart,” but it’s also what allows bad actors to gain access through backdoors.  In fact, a new research study by Princeton University suggests that smart appliances could be utilized in a botnet to drive massive power blackouts.

How a Smart Appliance Botnet Could Put the Grid at Risk

A botnet is a network of devices that are taken over and controlled as a group without the owners’ knowledge or consent.  Computers are often compromised in this manner, and once enslaved are typically used to send massive amounts of spam, or worse.  The act of herding smart appliances in the same way is a new threat.

In a nutshell, a smart appliance botnet could be utilized to manipulate energy demand.  This could involve, for example, turning all the enslaved appliances on at the same time, causing a spike that could overload the grid and cause cascading outages that could ultimately take the entire grid offline.  According to the study, it would only require a botnet of 90k air conditioners and 18k electric water heaters to disrupt demand in a targeted region.

The study labels this new type of botnet attack as MadIoT (stands for manipulation of demand via IoT), and it’s happening today.  The tactic is easy to repeat and difficult to detect, a double whammy for electric utilities.

For this reason, I predict this threat is something we need to get our heads around and deal with.  A great place to start would be to educate employees about the threat via training, as well as utilizing similar scenarios in exercises and drills.  Additionally, emergency plans should be reviewed to make sure processes are put in place to mitigate a botnet attack, should one occur.