| Mr
Xingweihua Pointing Out The Security Problems of Prepaid
Meters |
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| System of the meter is very easy to be paralytic
by using a high pressure wrap or a self-defence weapons to
attack its IC card interface, LCD or the sensor cable when
valve is open, LCD is displaying or IC card is being written.
After attacked, the vale of meter will never close and the
control of prepaid fee will fail. |
1、The aim of the nation to advocate installing the prepaid water meter, gas meter, heat meter and electricity meter is to improve the residents' commodity consciousness and regulate the unbalance between supply and demand by price lever. This measure can help people to save energy and help energy supply departments to upgrade their modernization management level. it can as well as to prevents residents from delaying paying the bill and energy supply department losing capital. Thus would benefits the energy supply companies to enlarge their reproduction, so that they can serve the consumer even better.
2、But now, most of the installed IC card prepaid
meters are with technology problems. Consumers can
very easily make the prepaid meter fail to control
the prepaid fee. However, consumers still can use
the energy supplied normally. That's to say, consumers
steal the energy without leaving any evidence, so
it is impossible to identify by law that consumers
stolen energy, which will cause the losses of large
sums of money.
3、As regard that the attacked IC card prepaid meter
does not need to be recharged, consumers may consume
the energy at their will, this will cause seriously
energy waste.
4、For the defects technology of the current IC card
prepaid meters, the dial just displays 4 digits,
viz. if the dial displays 9999, it will turn back
to 0. In order to have the dial display 0,consumers
would use the energy immoderately, which will lead
to even greater waste.
5、Since consumers have installed the IC card prepaid
meters, they have rights to decide when to have
their meter recharged and they also have rights
to give up recharging their meter. In light of the
supervisors are not allowed to check the meter by
entering the residents' houses, even the meter fails
to control the prepaid fee, it is impossible to
identify it is the consumer's fault by law. That's
because this defects are perhaps caused from the
meter itself or the energy selling system. If the
there's some errors in the IC card data memory,
data will be mixed up, it may also cause the failure
of the prepaid fee control. |
| For the IC card
prepaid meter powered by the built-in battery, if
there is some credit in the meter and the valve
is open, insert the high-pressure wrap into the
IC card interface and discharge to the circuit board
which is similar as the IC card, it will make the
meter fail to control the prepaid fee, and it will
not leave any evidence. |
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1、At present, the IC
card prepaid water meters and gas meters installed
in our country are powered by the built-in
batteries. For the unconvenient battery change,
it has now been gradually refused to use.
And most of the IC card water meters and gas
meters are now powered by the ordinary battery.
·What is the disadvantage of the built-in
battery powered meter?
①Make the cost of the product high.
②Performance of the battery not steady.
③Easy to paralyse when attacked.
④Unconvenient battery change. |
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2、When
user begin to use the gas meter, first install
the battery, then insert the recharge card
with credit in it, valve will open automatically,
and the LCD will display credit value. When
the meter begins measuring, the credit value
in LCD will be reduced in accordance with
the consumption amount, and the number in
the counter will increase accordingly.
·What is the disadvantage of the ordinary
powered gas meter?
①Valve may be tampered with by controlling
the battery.
②Card interface may be attacked by flint.
③Attack the inside meter from battery.
④The attack can be repeated.
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3、Insert the disturber
which is equipped with flint and circuit board
similar as IC card into card interface, press
the switch of the flint continuously, when
the number in LCD is displayed constantly,
continue to press the switch, move the battery
out of the battery socket, then go on pressing
the switch until the numbers in LCD disappear
for several minutes. At this time, the meter
has no ability to control the prepaid fee,
however the valve is still open.
·The gas meter powered by built-in battery
may be interfered by using the high-pressure
wrap with millions of voltage to attack the
card interface.
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4、User will consume
gas as much as they can until the mechanical
counter display 9999. At that time, if the
consumer goes on consuming gas, then the mechanical
counter will display 0000.
·For the errors of the counter displays and
the LCD display, it is not possible to judge
whether the meter is attacked or not.
·That is because when the gas meter is used
at normal situation, it also appear the above
phenomena. |
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5、At that time, reinstall
the battery, the gas meter will recover. If
there is no one to supervise, it is difficult
to discover whether the meter is attack or
not. Even the energy company find out some
problems, users may find an excuse that they
do not know, they even can say that that is
because meter is not qualified. The energy
supply company will have no idea since they
can not find out any evidence to prove that
user have tampered with it.
·It is not necessary to recover the data in
the counter of the attacked meter to 0, the
meter will recover at any time after it is
re-electrified. |
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Conclusion: The energy suppliers should choose the prepaid meters which have not any security problem. |
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| ---To
protect your rights, please be cautions when you use contact
IC card for prepaid meters since the prepaid meter may cause
problem due to the following reasons: |
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| Technological
problems |
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| At present,
no one has developed technology to enable contact IC card
prepaid water meters to resist interruption. If the prepaid
water meter and gas meter is attacked by 40,000-1,000,000V
static high-voltage at the moment of the valve opening,
it will cause paralysis of the system, as well as failure
to control the supply of prepaid water. |
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Economic Loss |
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| You may face
economic loss after buying prepaid water and gas meters.
This may be due to your requiring to dismantle them as a
result of poor performance or quality of the actual meters. |
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Customer problems |
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| Users will
be dissatisfied as they will not be refunded costs resulting
from dismantling poor quality meters or as a result of any
incorrect measurements or because of suspended supply of
water and heat. Users have spent a lot of money on the meters.
If these problems become widespread it could adversely affect
the confidence of society since prepayment meters are widely
used. |
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Political risks |
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| The chief
engineer will not be affected during his tenure of office
if the installed prepaid meters do not have serious problems.
If there are some defects these may be solved by himself
or he can say "I do not know". If however these meters are
still sold, these problems will not be solved by simply
saying "I do not know". It doesn't matter if you do not
know the technology, the above schematic
diagram will give you a very clear explanation.
Numerable market prospects has proved that prepayment
water meter, heat meter, timesharing electricity meter and
heat meter have been a very big market. Meanwhile, the device
to steal electricity, water and gas, and other high tech
stealing tools emerge as the times demands, which makes
a surprise attack on the consumers who buy these meters.
If the problem of prepaid water meter, gas meter, electricity
meter and heat meter are not solved, then install them on
a large scale, to attack this meters for stealing would
be very easy. If you do not know how to steal, it does not
matter. Because the special stealing device manufactures
will help you.
In fact, it does not need to master any high technical
if you want to steal water, electricity, gas and heat. You
can use a high pressure wrap or self-defence weapons to
attack the LCD, IC card interface or their cable of the
sensor when the valve is open. After disturbed, these meters
will stop measuring and controlling and the valve will never
close. So you will not need to charge for them. Implementing
way of paying fee in advanced, users have the rights to
decide whether to buy or not, and it has nothing to do with
the supervisor. After the attached meter restarted, it will
work normally, only between the time that it is attacked
and restart it can not work. |
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Technical Background |
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| To extent
the life span of the battery powered prepaid water meter,
gas meter and heat meter, circuit of which should be designed
to be low power consumption. Generally, it adopts low voltage
and resting way. To reduce the power consumption by low
voltage will weaken the meters to resist to the external
interference. For the purpose of reducing the battery power
consumption, all of the controllers are designed to be resting
way. But actually, by doing this, it makes it very difficult
to monitor the external circuit by hardware. So when the
mini controller are disturbed to stop working, watchdog
can not play it's role. However, the system stop working
will makes the control valve or switch fail to close and
since that meters will stop measuring.
Electricity meter is powered by electricity networks,
so its controller does not need any rest. Therefore, monitoring
the external circuit by hardware can be realized. When it
is interrupted, the mini controller will stop working and
the external monitor circuit is cut off. Not having any
rest, it will consume more power and weaken its resistance.
Some mini controller are waken at timingly to implement
controlling, but the job of cutting off can not be finished
by it. So at this moment, an external hardware have to be
connected. However, it will increase the power consumption.
Of course, all this problems can be solved as the technology
develops. But we should not sacrifice our products' cost
to reach our goal. Otherwise, its widely application will
be affected. The standard and popular electricity meter,
water meter, gas meter and heat meter for us should be"
Not afraid of stealing, reliable and good price". |
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