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Title: US Warns Hidden Radios May Be Embedded In Solar-Powered Highway
Infrastructure

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/09/10/2222...

U.S. officials issued an advisory warning that foreign-made solar-powered
highway infrastructure may contain hidden radios embedded in inverters and
batteries. Reuters reports: The advisory, disseminated late last month by the
U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, comes
amid escalating government action over the presence of Chinese technology in
America's transportation infrastructure. The four-page security note, a copy
of which was reviewed by Reuters, said that undocumented cellular radios had
been discovered "in certain foreign-manufactured power inverters and BMS,"
referring to battery management systems. The note, which has not previously
been reported, did not specify where the products containing undocumented
equipment had been imported from, but many inverters are made in China. There
is increasing concern from U.S. officials that the devices, along with the
electronic systems that manage rechargeable batteries, could be seeded with
rogue communications components that would allow them to be remotely tampered
with on Beijing's orders. [...] The August 20 advisory said the devices were
used to power a range of U.S. highway infrastructure, including signs,
traffic cameras, weather stations, solar-powered visitor areas and
warehouses, and electric vehicle chargers. The risks it cited included
simultaneous outages and surreptitious theft of data. The alert suggested
that relevant authorities inventory inverters across the U.S. highway system,
scan devices with spectrum analysis technology to detect any unexpected
communications, disable or remove any undocumented radios, and make sure
their networks were properly segmented.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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