El Pent\u00e1gono desplegar\u00e1 redes el\u00e9ctricas locales aut\u00f3nomas, o microrredes, en 134 bases del Ej\u00e9rcito. Pero decidieron probar la tecnolog\u00eda en DEF CON, buscando la ayuda de los piratas inform\u00e1ticos para encontrar vulnerabilidades para poder prevenir mejor los ciberataques. La colaboraci\u00f3n se desarroll\u00f3 en la Conferencia Anual de Ciberseguridad y Pirater\u00eda el fin de semana del 12 de agosto en Las Vegas, donde m\u00e1s de 1700 asistentes de DEF CON participaron en el desaf\u00edo de pirater\u00eda de microrredes del Pent\u00e1gono, y muchos de ellos bloquearon con \u00e9xito la red simulada.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon will deploy local, self-contained electric grids, or microgrids, to 134 Army bases, beginning in May. But first they tested the technology at DEF CON, looking for hackers\u2019 help finding potentially crippling vulnerabilities so they can better preempt cyberattacks.<\/p>\n
The collaboration\u00a0<\/strong>unfolded at the annual cybersecurity and hacking conference this past weekend in Las Vegas where more than 1,700 DEF CON attendees participated in Pentagon\u2019s microgrid hacking challenge, with many of them successfully shutting down the mock grid.<\/p>\n Benny was one of them. An ethical hacker from Colorado who did not want to reveal his last name, he short-circuited the Pentagon\u2019s model microgrid after several minutes of trying different attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we lose our\u00a0public infrastructure<\/a>, we lose stability so getting hackers thinking about how to break in and how to manipulate the data and what the data will do if it is manipulated \u2014 I think it\u2019s a really good idea,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly the Pentagon\u2019s aim. Defense officials said they came to DEF CON in hopes of finding potential hacks \u2014 and working to prevent them \u2014 because they understand microgrids can be vulnerable.<\/p>\n \u201cThe newer microgrids, like the more experimental one we\u2019re looking at, rely on [being] \u2026 automatically connected to weather data,\u201d said Katie Olson, the Pentagon\u2019s Deputy Chief Digital and AI Officer and director of the Defense Digital Service (DDS), a team of hackers, engineers and data scientists inside the Defense Department. Olson said she believes hackers will see that as an easy opportunity to wreak havoc on the grids by forcing \u201ca bunch of data in that [falsely] says, \u2018There\u2019s a lot of wind today,\u2019 and causes [it] to overload.\u201d<\/p>\n The Army is pushing the microgrid effort because the systems are energy efficient, cost-effective and can keep bases up and running even if a\u00a0cyberattack or natural disaster takes out the larger power grid<\/a>. But there\u2019s a downside, too. Because microgrids depend on advanced technology to connect various components providing intelligence and automation, they are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cIn general, renewable energy projects are very often smart energy projects, which are inherently connected to online systems and networks in such a way that they can be much more susceptible to cybersecurity attacks,\u201d said Morgan Higman, a fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cNot doing the due diligence with some of these hacking exercises could set us up for some serious security concerns or operational concerns, particularly for military installations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know that the national electrical grid is under constant stress, we know that our adversaries overseas are continuing to strike deeper and deeper into the United States infrastructure \u2026 We know that there is a definite cybersecurity threat.\u201d<\/p>\n JARROD ROSS, U.S. ARMY<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The hackers at DEF CON tried plenty of creative ways to disrupt the grid. One of the most successful involved injecting bad code into National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecasts the microgrids rely on to function.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how Benny and many other hackers at DEF CON were able to disable a wind turbine and solar panels powering the brightly lit model neighborhood that anchored the game. Lights inside the neighborhood\u2019s houses flickered on and off and the miniature wind turbine turned red, smoked and ground to a halt whenever a hacker won the challenge. What was valuable to DDS, officials said, was seeing the various inventive ways the DEF CON attendees found to manipulate the forecast data the model microgrid relied upon.<\/p>\n Nick Ashworth is the technical architect at DDS working on microgrid resilience. He\u2019s a seasoned engineer and former Navy tactical cyber electronic warfare expert. But on Saturday, he was outwitted by a teenager who figured out that because the microgrids run on the Kelvin temperature scale, which does not use negative values, she could insert negative numbers into the forecast models for the grid and crash the system.<\/p>\n He said the hack was one no one at DDS had thought of yet.<\/p>\n \u201cShe came up, she had fun, she kicked ass,\u201d Ashworth said. \u201cI was explaining the math to her because it\u2019s Kelvin and one of the Easter eggs is setting to absolute zero and she was like, \u2018Well, can I go lower than zero?’\u201d<\/p>\n Ashworth told her she could. When the girl asked what would happen, he says he told her that \u201ceverything would get really f\u2014ed up because the rest of the world doesn\u2019t go lower than zero in Kelvin. Physics has a real problem with that.\u201d<\/p>\n It is important the Pentagon gets microgrid\u2019s cybersecurity protections right, officials say. In addition to the worrisome national security implications of having Army installations without power, the microgrids\u2019 performance also will affect the public since neighborhoods near Army installations will be on the network, too.<\/p>\n Ashworth said that\u2019s a good thing, pointing to the powerful winter storms that hit Texas in February 2022, killing 246 people. If those storms had occurred at a time when Army installations had microgrids running, he said, the systems could have powered homes where vulnerable populations lived.<\/p>\n That may well be true, but experts say that despite their status as a fail safe for the normal electricity grid, microgrids are more susceptible to cyberattacks. Given this fact, some wonder if microgrids are safe to count on for backup power.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re actually making [the Army base] more susceptible to cyberattacks by making a smart grid because there\u2019s points of entry and penetration that people can get into and trick the system,\u201d said Rob Cuzner, the director of the Center for Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a consultant to the Navy\u2019s microgrid project. \u201cThere isn\u2019t so much networking communications with more conventional grids.\u201d<\/p>\n