Potential threats to uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices

In this video for Help Net Security, Chris Westphal, Cybersecurity Evangelist at Ordr, talks about an alert that came out recently from CISA and the Department of Energy (DOE), about potential threats to uninterruptible power supply (UPS) devices that are connected to the internet.

UPS devices are used to provide emergency power, they’re usually connected to critical infrastructure. They’re basically batteries that provide temporary power when the power goes out and until a generator kicks in to provide longer term temporary power.

What CISA and the DOE were warning about is that threat actors have the ability to connect these devices and deploy malicious firmware, which allows them to remotely control these devices and potentially shut them off (and subsequently shut off the devices that are connected to them) and even destroy them.