Chinese “kill switches” have been found hidden in American solar farms, prompting calls for Ed Miliband to halt the rollout of renewables.
On Thursday, the Energy Secretary was urged to impose an “immediate pause” on his green energy blitz to review whether UK solar plants are also at risk.
The components found in the US included cellular radios capable of switching off the equipment remotely, raising serious concerns about grid security, according to Reuters.
They were found inside power inverters manufactured by unnamed Chinese companies.
Power inverters are the key links between solar or wind farms and the rest of the power system, converting their electricity so the wider grid can use it.
One source told Reuters that compromising such equipment would give Beijing the ability to inflict blackouts on the West, claiming it would create “a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”.
Source on this?
Not that I don’t believe you, fuck Microsoft with an umbrella as far as I’m concerned, but that’s the kind of claim you want to support with a source
IT guy here, Microsoft has extensive remote management tools.
Lets look at Microsoft Intune
Intune/Autopilot - This is Microsoft’s device management portal, this allows IT admins to remotely manage Windows 10/11 computers, and includes the ability to remotely erase a computer. Autopilot is a way to assign computers to a company so that when you you boot the computer it will only allow the Windows installer to be logged on to using an account from the company that registered it.
It is even possible to set a bios password through Intune remotely.
Microsoft could easily trigger a wipe of any computer that is connected to their cloud, and then make sure it could only be logged on to by the person it is registered to.
They could also change the password/mfa settings, and lock the UEFI
Effectively locking you out of your computer.
This can all be done through existing Microsoft systems, and I expect that Microsoft either manage all private Windows 11 computers logged in with a Microsoft account in a special instance of Intune or a separate but similar system with similar capabillities.
Now, this means that Microsoft does have the tools to brick your computer for Windows use.
So, uhh… what happens if a hacker gets access to critical functionality of said services, like wiping out computers? Can they theoretically really wipe out all of connected earth’s windows computers? Seems like there should be some serious safeguards against this
There probably are plenty of safeguards against it, but the features are there.