British Gas smart meter replacement

martinthebandit

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/09/smart_meter_privacy_oops/


Smart meters are fine, nothing to worry about, providing everything they are connected to, directly or indirectly, is secure to of course.

Personally I will be resisting having one as long as possible

martinthebandit

poppyriley wrote: »

What A Load of Shiiitee that Link Is. Next Theyll Be Saying Elvis Is Still Alive .

Really? Care to point out which bits are incorrect?

staffyman_2

Can someone please tell me how a smart meter will help the energy company's with controlling demand At peak times ? If I want to boil a kettle does it matter what meter I have ?

martinthebandit

poppyriley wrote: »

Who Would anyone Want To HAck a Smart meter, They Would Need The Phone Number to dial into it , if people wanted to burgle your property its easier just to watch the house watch you go out, Than Having some geek decode all your history ,

None of the many reported security issues have much to do with hacking an individual meter, but most of them involve someone else gaining control of how much power (if any) you can have and at what cost.

Installing meters with known security problems that link back to infrastructure which has known security problems is just not a good idea.

And then when you add in how much bills are going to have to rise to pay for the damn things plus how much easier it is for the power companies to introduce even more complicated tariffs .................

No thanks

martinthebandit

poppyriley wrote: »

Too Late Already Been Signed Off Yer Getting Them.

Lucky us eh?

staffyman_2

If A criminal wanted to burgle a property and could get a gadget that could tell them when the house hold went to bed or days the house was empty it would make a criminals life a lot easier don't you think ? Don't forget when DVDs came out they said that the Incription was unbreakable and we all know what happened there !

N9eav

poppyriley wrote: »

Who Would anyone Want To HAck a Smart meter, They Would Need The Phone Number to dial into it , if people wanted to burgle your property its easier just to watch the house watch you go out, Than Having some geek decode all your history ,

How does the meter send the reading back to BG?

torbrex

N9eav wrote: »

How does the meter send the reading back to BG?

the meter is fitted with an active sim card and the information on usage is passed through that.

utility_csa

Right here we go, sorry for the wall of text but it explains alot about smart meters from another thread.

utility_csa wrote: »

Hope this answers some of the questions.......


You are correct in a way.. the smart meters internal clock can be altered so that you are in you on/off-peak times easily, however this is totally corrupts your data. The data collectors do not like this at all, and want them changed back ASAP. No meter operator would risk their license to do it, plus if they have an external audit they get a nice fail if the clock time is wrong.
To your second point, im sure i answered this the other week; Each mop has a different setup with ‘their’ smart meter, each meter is set up with 3 levels of access. L1 – Reader ( you can view the reads), L2 – Data Collector ( you can pull the reads and some configurations ), L3 – Mop (read/write access to all the setup). Each of these levels have a different password, each Mop has different passwords. Add to one other security feature the PIN or Outstation. ( each mop uses a different one, some mops this differs between meter types ).
Then you have to take into fact what baud rate is the modem of the meter using. If using a dedicated telephone line 1200kbs, gsm 9600, gprs 19200. ( Note: if you calling a gprs modem with a gsm protocol it will give you just ring out or drop as it would if you had the wrong password ) You then need a compliant modem / line for the other end.. So before you start to try hacking a meter you need to know its baud rate, what pin out of 9999 useable ones, then a nice 8digit plus password, oh and whatever the logon user is.
Also the fact the meter logs access attempts and the ip address. Any meter operator is going to notice when the access log goes from a 500kb to 50mbs.

You will also need to know the phone number for the sim card ( most sims use two numbers only one will work and these arent always anywhere near the same number, which arent on the sim card. other than the sim card reference number which is a 19 digit number, the sim card owner will not give anyone other than the authorised owner of the sim card a number that this is related to. every attempt to log on is a transfer of roughly 400 bytes the owner of the sim card pays these data transfer charges, they are going to notice if their charge goes from say 1pence a day to a couple of quid.

Do you really think anyone is going to even attempt that to just try and break into your property...

British Gas also offer smart meters.

Nope, at the moment its either get a dedicate landline, try PAKNET or leave on hand held read.

This issue if due to which data collectors can read x type of meter, and who the supplier wants as their data collector. Also applies to whom the supplier wishes to be the Mop. In Industry and Commercial properties you can switch who your supplier whenever with your smart meter with no hassle.... Or it goes back to being a hand read meter.

Funny thing, the earliest smart meters that i know have been fitted are from 1992. ( yes they have been around alot longer than people think ). Guess what – these sites aren’t paying more for their useage. The idea of a smart grid is still miles away...
Who do you think a supplier wants to accurately bill a High Voltage building that pays 7k a month in standing charges for their transformer and supply KVA or one household??

There is strict controls over the collection of this data. The only parties that have access to your billing is 1) Meter Operator. 2) Data collector/Data Retriever. 3) Supplier.
Take into fact some smart meters don’t record your half hourly useage, which seems to be common on single phase meters they won’t be able to “check when you are in”.
Going by some people’s ideas on this forum, you wouldn’t believe that shops can close overnight without being robbed.

You can also rather than get estimated bills, tell your supplier it. I don’t even get your last sentence.
See my above point in regards to changing supplier, When were talking about standards the meters are all manufactured and calibrated by the same companies that your current meter has. Its the back end platforms that isn’t standard and wont be for some time.

N9eav

torbrex wrote: »

the meter is fitted with an active sim card and the information on usage is passed through that.

Hmmm. I get no mobile signal here, should be interesting?