Water meters, as everyday measuring instruments used by every household, play a very important role in life. Due to the problems of data collection, labor cost, data accuracy, difficulty in entering households, etc. as well as the development of science and technology and the implementation of stepped water prices, smart water meters have become the future development trend of the water meter industry.
According to predictions, the market size of smart water meters is expected to increase from 3.66 billion yuan in 2015 to 7.004 billion yuan in 2020, and is expected to usher in substantial growth, especially the new generation of Internet of Things and NB-IoT smart water meters will achieve mass production, intelligent The growth rate of water meters will remain above 28%, and the market prospect is broad. Although the development trend of smart water meters is rapid, it brings many conveniences to people's lives. But the security problem still exists. Recently, the two world's top information security conferences in the United States, Blackhat and Defcon, were successfully held in Las Vegas. The world's top security companies and hackers will gather to show the latest scientific research results in network security.
The Internet security company 360 from China brought seven major issues to the two major events and once again set a new high in the number of domestic contributors. One of the important issues is the safety analysis of Lora smart water meters.
As a terminal water meter in the wireless remote transmission scheme, the Lora smart water meter is mainly applied to the LoRa technology. Due to the early start of LoRa technology, after several years of exploration and practice, the wireless remote water meter LoRa technology has become very mature and is widely used in urban water supply metering and other projects.
At the Defcon conference site, the security team from 360 Unicorn took a LORA smart water meter system as an example to analyze the potential security risks from the physical level of sensors. During the demonstration, the unicorn team not only successfully intercepted the data content sent by the water meter, but also found the water meter data of normal users nearby, and then maliciously forged any node to report the water meter data and tampered with the data.
Today, with the rapid development of technology, the application of smart water meters brings convenience to enterprises and users, and also puts forward higher requirements for the safety of water meters. In fact, the actual application of smart water meters in China is still lacking corresponding protection for information storage and information transmission. On the one hand, the data of smart water meters may be tampered with and used to increase the household's water bill burden. On the other hand, the leakage of a large amount of data lays a deep hidden danger to the safety of residents and cities.
Faced with the problems of smart water meters, the Smart Standards Committee has started a corresponding call for cryptographic algorithms and cryptographic products to be autonomous and controllable. Related units have initiated research on relevant schemes, and based on extensive investigations of the current status of the industry, experts have been organized to conduct demonstrations and development has been completed. A security chip technology solution based on the SM4 algorithm is presented. However, there is still a long way to go in the safety of smart water meters.
In the process of rapid development of smart water meters, we must not lose sight of each other. only on the basis of the simultaneous development of technology and information can we promote the further development of the smart water meter industry.