Security Analysis of Solar Microinverters
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In 2024, the number of registered micro inverters used for so called "Balkonkraftwerke" doubled to around 780,000 [10]. Previous work has not addressed the cyber security of these devices in an academic way although this high number of micro inverters can have an impact on the electricity grid. Therefore, there is a high need for strong security of these devices. In this thesis, we analyze the cyber security of mi- croinverters of seven different manufacturers. We develop a structured procedure to analyse the cyber security of all the different models in the same way. We show that there is a high number of vulnerabilites in nearly all ecosystems by using a customized attacker model and a special test setup. We find vulnerabilites in the app, the devices, the backend and the communication inbetween. In addition, we define our procedure in order to report the vulnerabilites to the manufactur- ers, but more than half of the manufacturers do not respond at all to our reports. This thesis shows the different vulnerabilities and their possible impact on the security of personal data as well as the risk of device takeovers and of the compromisation of the backend.
DOI: 10.26083/tuda-7495
Author: Conrad, Valentin
Language: English
Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7115012104
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