BDE

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10061950

Security researchers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) have exposed critical vulnerabilities in Hoymiles solar inverters that allow attackers to remotely control, manipulate, or destroy hundreds of thousands of solar installations across Europe. The Chinese manufacturer holds roughly 20 percent of the European microinverter market, making the security flaw a widespread threat to balcony power plants and small rooftop solar systems.

...

During experimental tests, a modified handheld scanner located two dozen foreign inverters and their identification numbers within 20 minutes. In Augsburg, Hunz identified 42 hackable systems within just one hour. The radio signals can travel several hundred meters, making it feasible to mount attack equipment on drones for systematic scanning of residential areas.

Once attackers have the serial numbers, they can switch inverters on or off, alter power limits, and inject malware through an unprotected firmware update command. Tampering with sensitive network parameters or erasing bootloader memory could lead to fires, electrical accidents, or device destruction requiring physical repair.

...

The CCC informed Hoymiles [which is headquartered in China] about the vulnerability in February but received no initial response. Only after the German Federal Office for Information Security contacted the Chinese authority CNCERT did Hoymiles react at the end of June. The company announced a security update for mid-October.

...

Archived

Of course it is. Of course.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49317483

I have a pi-Hole serving my network. Since a long time I have seen a lot of requests to chunks.memfault.com from my phone. They where all blocked. I thought it was because of my old Samsung phone. But now I switched to another Android phone and the requests are still there. I installed NetGuard to see which app makes the requests, but none of them are. There is an entry for memfault.com but there is no app attached, only sni. So that makes me wonder if Android itself makes calls to this URL?

Or is there another way I can find out which part of my phone makes these calls?

Pepper & Carrot Episode 04: Stroke of genius licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 by David Revoy

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10061950

Security researchers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) have exposed critical vulnerabilities in Hoymiles solar inverters that allow attackers to remotely control, manipulate, or destroy hundreds of thousands of solar installations across Europe. The Chinese manufacturer holds roughly 20 percent of the European microinverter market, making the security flaw a widespread threat to balcony power plants and small rooftop solar systems.

...

During experimental tests, a modified handheld scanner located two dozen foreign inverters and their identification numbers within 20 minutes. In Augsburg, Hunz identified 42 hackable systems within just one hour. The radio signals can travel several hundred meters, making it feasible to mount attack equipment on drones for systematic scanning of residential areas.

Once attackers have the serial numbers, they can switch inverters on or off, alter power limits, and inject malware through an unprotected firmware update command. Tampering with sensitive network parameters or erasing bootloader memory could lead to fires, electrical accidents, or device destruction requiring physical repair.

...

The CCC informed Hoymiles [which is headquartered in China] about the vulnerability in February but received no initial response. Only after the German Federal Office for Information Security contacted the Chinese authority CNCERT did Hoymiles react at the end of June. The company announced a security update for mid-October.

...

Archived

• Estonia, Luxembourg and UK are the top three in biennial Yale University index in tackling pollution and other issues
• US, China are falling further behind, the researchers say

...

The biennial Yale University index again ranks Estonia as the best-performing of 177 assessed countries, after strong recent efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and protect its ecosystems. Luxembourg is second, and the UK is third, having moved up from fifth place in the 2024 index.

European countries dominate the top 20, with only Japan, in 16th, not situated in the continent. Australia is in 25th place, two places ahead of the US. Laos is the last-ranked nation, with the bottom three rounded out by India and Bangladesh.

...

Despite this worsening situation, several countries, most notably the US under Donald Trump, have recently scaled back efforts to combat the climate crisis. The Yale index uses data up to 2024, capturing the last part of Joe Biden’s presidency rather than Trump’s, but still finds that even then the US’s emissions were falling far too slowly to reach net zero by 2050, as the science demands must be done to avoid disastrous climate breakdown.

China, now the world’s largest carbon emitter ahead of the US, has made huge progress in developing its clean energy sector, the Yale report finds, but still derives 56% of its electricity from coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and performs relatively poorly on its marine conservation and biodiversity stewardship, the scorecard found.

...

“Europe has really stepped out in front and is continuing to pursue climate change with not the full vigor it might have a few years back when the political circumstances were different, but they’re getting the payback for decades now of work on this issue at the cutting edge,” said Esty.

“The laggards in the US and China both are still lagging, seem to be falling further behind and are holding back the global community’s efforts to achieve the targets that have been agreed upon.”

China has climbed the table somewhat to 129th position, however, after previously being ranked near last due to the dangerous air pollution suffered by many of its major cities. It has since removed many of the coal-fired power plants near cities that caused such problems. The Yale index also marks India down for its tree cover loss, pesticide pollution risks and ocean conservation from the last index. “India’s performance is shockingly bad for a country that aspires to be a leader in global terms on the economy,” Esty said.

...

Archived

My guess is that people who work on small codebases with low-turnover teams (say, Redis or games like The Witness) would say “obviously you have to understand it completely, otherwise you can’t do good work”. I’d also guess that people who work on large codebases with high-turnover teams (say, the Google web search backend or GitHub) would say “obviously you can’t understand it completely, you just have to do the best you can in your local area”.

These are two largely different ways of programming with different methods, practices and cultures. However, the first group is over-represented in online discussion about software engineering. I want to defend the second group against the first.

Comments

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10060855

• Rules would favour EU companies in strategic sectors
• Could reject bids with less than 50% EU content
• Proposal is expected to be published in September

...

Public procurement accounts for around 15% of the EU's GDP, according to the draft proposal, ​equating to about €2.5 trillion ($2.86 trillion) based on the EU's 2025 GDP.

...

The proposal increases the security role of public procurement in that it allows authorities to examine whether a bidder's ownership, control or financing structure creates a risk of foreign interference.

Buyers could also take into ​account whether companies are subject ​to third-country laws that ⁠may force disclosure of sensitive information or otherwise interfere with the contract's performance.

...

Authorities would be encouraged, and in some cases required, to take account of risks linked to critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, supply-chain disruptions, strategic ⁠dependencies and ​foreign influence when awarding contracts.

..