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lecture: How an intern hacked the powergrid

The Horus Scenario

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This talk focuses on the thesis assignment of Willem Westerhof. During this thesis it was discovered that a weak spot exists withing the Powergrid, allowing an attacker to perform a distributed attack using PV-installations to cause massive (nation-wide/continental) power outages.

#NetworkSecurity #PhysicalSecurity

This talk explains the so called Horus scenario (also see the article of the Volkskrant released the week prior to SHA2017). This is a scenario that exploits a weak spot in the powergrid, to cause large scale power failures by hacking PV-installations. The presentation will contain the theoretical and mathmatical foundation of this scenario and the practical evidence showing that it is in fact possible. Note that this presentation does not include full technical details, as not all vulnerabilities are fixed yet. In this presentation we will also show expected costs of impact, and take a short look at what may happen in the future if we continue to develop insecure products this way.