LONDON, May 14 (Reuters) - U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said.
Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers. While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.
However, rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some Chinese solar power inverters by U.S experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, the two people said.
Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.
Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at. The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said.
Both declined to be named because they did not have permission to speak to the media.
"We know that China believes there is value in placing at least some elements of our core infrastructure at risk of destruction or disruption," said Mike Rogers, a former director of the U.S. National Security Agency. "I think that the Chinese are, in part, hoping that the widespread use of inverters limits the options that the West has to deal with the security issue."
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said: "We oppose the generalisation of the concept of national security, distorting and smearing China's infrastructure achievements."
Threat actor used malicious Google Invites and hidden Unicode “Private Use Access” characters (PUAs) to brilliantly obfuscate and hide a malicious NPM package.
On March 19th, 2025, we discovered a package called os-info-checker-es6 and were taken aback. We could tell it was not doing what it said on the tin. But what's the deal? We decided to investigate the matter and initially hit some dead ends. But patience pays off, and we eventually got most of the answers we sought. We also learned about Unicode PUAs (No, not pick-up artists). It was a roller coaster ride of emotions!
Twilio has denied in a statement for BleepingComputer that it was breached after a threat actor claimed to be holding over 89 million Steam user records with one-time access codes.
The threat actor, using the alias Machine1337 (also known as EnergyWeaponsUser), advertised a trove of data allegedly pulled from Steam, offering to sell it for $5,000.
When examining the leaked files, which contained 3,000 records, BleepingComputer found historic SMS text messages with one-time passcodes for Steam, including the recipient's phone number.
Owned by Valve Corporation, Steam is the world's largest digital distribution platform for PC games, with over 120 million monthly active users.
Valve did not respond to our requests for a comment on the threat actor's claims.
Independent games journalist MellolwOnline1, who is also the creator of the SteamSentinels community group that monitors abuse and fraud in the Steam ecosystem, suggests that the incident is a supply-chain compromise involving Twilio.
MellowOnline1 pointed to technical evidence in the leaked data that indicates real-time SMS log entries from Twilio's backend systems, hypothesizing a compromised admin account or abuse of API keys.
During the second day of Pwn2Own Berlin 2025, competitors earned $435,000 after exploiting zero-day bugs in multiple products, including Microsoft SharePoint, VMware ESXi, Oracle VirtualBox, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Mozilla Firefox.
The highlight was a successful attempt from Nguyen Hoang Thach of STARLabs SG against the VMware ESXi, which earned him $150,000 for an integer overflow exploit.
Dinh Ho Anh Khoa of Viettel Cyber Security was awarded $100,000 for hacking Microsoft SharePoint by leveraging an exploit chain combining an auth bypass and an insecure deserialization flaw.
Palo Alto Networks' Edouard Bochin and Tao Yan also demoed an out-of-bounds write zero-day in Mozilla Firefox, while Gerrard Tai of STAR Labs SG escalated privileges to root on Red Hat Enterprise Linux using a use-after-free bug, and Viettel Cyber Security used another out-of-bounds write for an Oracle VirtualBox guest-to-host escape.
In the AI category, Wiz Research security researchers used a use-after-free zero-day to exploit Redis and Qrious Secure chained four security flaws to hack Nvidia's Triton Inference Server.
On the first day, competitors were awarded $260,000 after successfully exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows 11, Red Hat Linux, and Oracle VirtualBox, reaching a total of $695,000 earned over the first two days of the contest after demonstrating 20 unique 0-days.
The Pwn2Own Berlin 2025 hacking competition focuses on enterprise technologies, introduces an AI category for the first time, and takes place during the OffensiveCon conference between May 15 and May 17.
US man who hacked SEC’s X account to spike Bitcoin price sentenced to prison
Eric Council Jr., 26, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release on Friday for participating in the hack of the official X account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing in a press release. Council and other hackers took over the SEC’s X account in 2024 to falsely announce that the agency had approved Bitcoin exchange traded funds, or ETFs, which shot up the price of the cryptocurrency before later dropping.
According to the DOJ, Council and his co-conspirators performed a SIM swap attack against the cellphone account of a person who had access to the SEC’s X account, which allowed the hackers to take control of their phone number. From there, the hackers reset the password of the SEC’s X account, granting them control of the account.
