Europe’s huge solar infrastructure at critical threat from Chinese hackers: Report

New Delhi: A new report has warned that by exploiting hardware backdoors or pushing malicious updates simultaneously to millions of inverters, key components of the massive solar infrastructure, Beijing “theoretically commands the ability to cause massive blackouts all around Europe”.

The inverter is the “electronic brain” that converts solar energy into usable electricity for the wider network.

Since these modern devices require constant software updates, maintenance and data monitoring, they are permanently connected to the internet, said the report in Brussels Signal.

“Today, approximately 80 per cent of Europe’s new solar installations rely entirely on Chinese-made inverters, with state-linked giants like Huawei and Sungrow, firms legally bound under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law to assist the state’s intelligence services, almost completely dominating the market,” the report said.

This “staggering concentration” creates an unprecedented systemic risk that transcends standard economic competition, it added.

According to the report, Europe has systematically planted a much more sophisticated, digital threat deep inside its critical infrastructure.

According to cybersecurity experts, a hostile actor possessing remote access to these connected devices would not even need to launch a conventional military strike to paralyse the continent.

The report said that it is estimated that it takes control of roughly 10 gigawatts of electric power to achieve a severe outage of the European energy network.

China currently commands the underlying infrastructure for well over 220 gigawatts, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“This means the ruling regime in Beijing has effectively been handed the master switch of continental electricity supply,” the report noted.

The European Commission in May moved to block EU funds from purchasing Chinese inverters. But this move “is a humiliating admission of criminal, systemic blindness”.

“The crisis has again been the fault of a naive, if not bought out by lobbyists, political class that prioritises cheap, heavily subsidised Chinese imports over national security,” the report mentioned.

IANS