siemens

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued an alert warning that hackers could exploit code in Siemens-owned technology to attack power plants and other national critical infrastructure.

Security researcher Justin Clarke exposed the flaw at a Los Angeles conference last week, claiming he discovered a way of spying on encrypted traffic in hardware owned by a Siemens subsidiary, RuggedCom.

The DHS advisory noted: "An attacker may use the key to create malicious communication to a RuggedCom network device."

DHS added that the government department was in contact with RuggedCom and the researcher in order to … Read more

It's not every day that you land a spacecraft on Mars, even if you're NASA. And in the case of the Curiosity rover, hurtling toward a Mars landing as Sunday night turns into Monday morning, the space agency is tempting fate with a novel approach that involves a big parachute, a specially designed winch, and some very high hopes.

The rover's descent through the Martian atmosphere, which NASA has dubbed the "Seven Minutes of Terror," will be an edge-of-your-seat experience, despite the space agency's excruciating preparations.

Consider, for instance, just one key element that … Read more

Britain has always led the world in the most important things. Like humor and diffidence.

However, evidence emerging from the land of a very long-lasting monarch is that the nation's grandees may have given up on speed cameras.

A survey by the Sun (yes, yes, I know) suggests that almost half of all the speed cameras in the green and pleasant land have been turned off. The figures, indeed, are startling. In the London area, 565 out of 754 cameras are apparently shuttered. And in the West Midlands, 250 out of 326.

The cause of this bizarre enlightenment is … Read more

City buses, streetcars, and regional rail lines all over the world run on electricity, garnered from overhead lines. Now Siemens wants to apply the same technology to long-haul trucking with its eHighway concept.

Siemens, an industrial and automotive supplier, contends that the majority of vehicle pollution comes from big diesel trucks transporting goods over many freeway and highway miles. Its eHighway would eliminate tailpipe pollution from these trucks for the majority of those miles.

On a test track in Europe, Siemens has been running trucks using its diesel-hybrid drive technology. Conductors on top of the trucks make contact with overhead … Read more

NEW ORLEANS--T-Mobile's network will be compatible with the iPhone later this year -- even if it isn't selling it, the company said today.

The wireless carrier added that it had tapped Ericsson and Nokia-Siemens for its $4 billion 4G LTE deployment.

The moves will address the two biggest gaps at T-Mobile: the lack of the iPhone and a more advanced 4G LTE network. Bogged down by its failed merger attempt with AT&T last year, the company has more recently shifted gears in hopes of mounting a comeback in the wireless market. … Read more

Energy heavyweight Siemens is buying some Silicon Valley software savvy to make sense of the smart grid.

Siemens Energy today announced that it has acquired San Mateo, Calif.-based eMeter and that its meter data software will be integrated into Siemens product line. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close later this month.

eMeter's software is designed to collect data from two-way meters and feed it into utilities' back-end business systems. The venture capital-backed company is headed by former Oracle executive and Veritas CEO Gary Bloom.

By collecting data such as customer power consumption … Read more

When it comes to capturing energy from powerful offshore winds, bigger is better.

Siemens today introduced a larger version of its 6-megawatt wind turbine with a permanent magnet-driven generator set for installation offshore in Europe. The diameter of the circle created by spinning rotor blades will be either 120 meters or 154 meters (that is, almost 400 feet or 505 feet) across.

Land-based turbines typically have a capacity of up to 2 megawatts, but larger turbines are being designed to capture stronger, steadier offshore winds. Siemens projects that up to 50 of its SWT-6.0 turbines will be installed in … Read more

STOCKHOLM (Bloomberg)--Volvo Car and Siemens said they plan a partnership to develop electric vehicles and aim to start testing the autos by the end of this year.

Siemens, Europe's largest engineering company, will develop electric motors and charging systems with Volvo, of Gothenburg, Sweden. Siemens will try out as many as 200 Volvo electric cars under real-life conditions by late 2012 following test-track studies in coming months, the manufacturers said in separate statements.

"We are moving ahead quickly in this area," Volvo CEO Stefan Jacoby said in the carmaker's statement. ''Our aim is to be … Read more

LAS VEGAS--A researcher said today that he has discovered a number of vulnerabilities in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) from Siemens that are used to automate mechanical devices in utilities, power plants, and other industrial control environments and which could be remotely controlled to cause damage if connected to the Internet.

Dillon Beresford, a security researcher at NSS Labs, conducted demos of some attacks on the various Siemens Simatic Step 7 systems during his presentation at the Black Hat security conference here.

Beresford's work shows that it's possible to read and write data to a PLC memory even when … Read more