New for of mass terrorism?
Lets see if we can work out a movie plot based on Smart Meters....
Each company will have to have a secure key in the meters so that they can read them. This will need to be changed when a customer churns from one supplier to the next. After all, companies won't want to come round and replace the meter when I change at the end of every contract period. So the smart meter will need a cryptographic key, and the key must be updateable.
Let's choose a company that supplies Electricity and Gas to be metered at the home. We will call them EDF, because, its just a name, and they are the perfidious French, so, why not. Always good to have a foreign body in a movie. Our terrorist, tired of all the hassle of banging planes in to buildings, decided to break in to the EDF control room, holds a gun to the head of the control team, and insists that they open up the application that allows them to change the key. Terrorist then inputs his own key, and then tells every meter in the country connected to this company that it is to cut off. And he walks out.
We now have to either pay the terrorist a huge amount for the key, or change every meter that the company had. That would be about, hmm, 6 M home, so possibly 12 M meters. Lets say 1/2 per house, so 6 M man days. Well, there goes the unemployment queue I guess. But even so, if you had 10,000 people changing or resetting meters, that is still 2 years to recover.
So, can anyone see a flaw with this? No other cryptographic key has remained secret for ever. So it is liable to leak out. As is the algorithm, as that will need to be widely known to all supply companies.
Or how about the supply companies put the meter manufacturing out to tends. Hey! We found this real cheap supplier, called China. Of course, there is no chance that they would put their own back door in to the meters, now is there?
Nightmare, meet scenario.
Black Helicopters, because. Just because.