Hacking the Smart Grid

The city of Miami and several commercial partners plan to rollout a “smart grid ” citywide electrical infrastructure by the year 2011. This rollout was announced on the heels of news that foreign agents have infiltrated our existing electrical infrastructure and that recent penetration tests have uncovered numerous vulnerabilities in the proposed technologies. Simultaneously, the National Institute for Standards in Technology (“NIST”) has recently released a roadmap for producing smart grid standards. In this whitepaper, I will discuss the flaws with the current guidelines and map them to the criticisms of similar regulatory mandates, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS”), that rely heavily on organizations policing themselves. What is the Smart Grid? The smart grid provides electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology. The proposed technology will allow suppliers to remotel