Saint SUN:DOWN, Who Switched Off the Sun

Patron of solar inverters, apps that encrypt badly, and power grids that count on good weather.

Life

On 27 March 2025 Forescout Vedere Labs published SUN:DOWN, research gathering 46 vulnerabilities in the solar inverters of three major vendors. Among them, SunGrow's iSolarCloud app encrypted data with too weak an AES key, allowing intercepted communications to be decrypted. The researchers warned that a large fleet of hijacked inverters could be used to destabilise the power grid. The flaws were later fixed.

Prayer

O Saint SUN:DOWN, who makes the sun set at will, let our inverters encrypt with keys worthy of the name. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by updating inverter firmware and apps and taking off the public network the panels that don't belong there.

Weak key, trembling grid.