# A Simple Experimental Stand for Studying the Network Security Level of Power Electronic Devices
## 1 Introduction  
In terms of communication capabilities, power electronic devices (PEDs) have reached their maximum. Almost any PED, if designed to have this functionality, can now be connected to an IP network. So, it will be controlled or monitored remotely. Years ago, this was impossible, or rather impractical, because the purpose of a PED is to supply power to different devices or to convert electrical energy with some parameters into electrical energy with other parameters [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. But with the rapid development of the Internet and the evolution of the idea of connectivity of any devices to the Internet, PEDs such as inverters, PV controllers, PDUs, UPSs and others can now be connected to the Internet. However, being connected to the Internet poses many risks. As it is known, any device that is connected to the Internet is a potential victim of an attack, which is designed to abuse that device. PEDs can be considered as part of the critical infrastructure group. Therefore, they are important devices because without them it would not be possible to supply power to the various devices, used for building telecommunication networks, such as switches, routers, servers and others. Therefore, it is necessary for the PEDs that will be connected to IP networks, especially if they will be monitored/controlled over the Internet, to be secured [6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19]. Hacking a PED can lead to various undesirable consequences, depending on the devices that are power supplied by the PED, such as the following:  
* Shutting down/hard restart servers--if a PED is used to supply power to servers and it is hacked, the attacker at any time can shut down or constantly restart the server(s) that are power supplied by that PED;* Sabotage the whole or part of an ISP network--if PEDs are used for supplying power to network devices that are used for building up the ISP's communications network, hacking them would lead to possible temporary disruptions in network operation (e.g., the attacker intentionally restarts network devices periodically by commanding the hacked PEDs) or to a complete network shutdown, again due to controlling the PEDs;
* Editing data related to the values of current, voltage, frequency, power, etc. These manipulated data can lead to errors/problems in the operability of devices such as electric vehicle charging stations. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research to find out the network security level of a particular PED before it is installed/connected in the corresponding IP network. Why conduct such research? As mentioned above, PEDs now have the ability to connect to IP networks or the Internet. So, they can be considered as network devices and can be attacked like any other network device. This means that connecting such a device that has not been previously studied for possible network security vulnerabilities would compromise the entire network. No serious network administrator would connect an unstudied device to the network they maintain because it would \"expose\" the network. Common questions that these administrators ask the installers of various devices with network functionality (the ability to connect to IP networks), such as NVRs, DVRs, security system modules, or access control systems, through which these systems will be monitored remotely, are as follows: which network ports they are using; what traffic they are generating; any additional open ports; is the data exchange encrypted, etc? The installers themselves, in most cases, cannot provide such information because they do not know it. In most cases, some of this information is not even given in the technical documentation of the devices. And providing information about how the devices' performance changes during various cyber-attacks has not occurred to the manufacturers/developers of these modules at all. Answering these questions, as well as the experience I have gained during the study of IP networks, gave me the idea for the realization of the presented experimental setup.