Smart Grid Infrastructure Vulnerability

Tallahassee has begun rolling out Smart Meters city wide as part of an effort to decrease costs to the city-owned utility. There a many critics of the initiative, and I don't feel qualified to speak about the specifics on purchasing and installing this technology.

However, when I found out that the collectors that talk to the Smart Meters, and then in turn report data to the city utility actually have public, routable, IP addresses, my mouth popped open.

That is ludicrous. And now one of the manufacturers of these systems is acknowledging potential problems.

IOActive Verifies Critical Flaws in Next Generation Energy Infrastructure

Look, I'm not an expert in infrastructure, but there has got to be a better way to do this.