Schneider Electric Solar Products Shipped with Malware Installed on USB Drives

cageymaru

cageymaru

Fully [H]
Joined
Apr 10, 2003
Messages
22,077
Schneider Electric has become the latest company affected by malware preloaded on their products during manufacture at a third-party supplier's facility. Schneider Electric's Conext ComBox and Conext Battery Monitor are part of their solar systems product lines. Schneider Electric recommends that users discard the USB drives that shipped with the units and download the software directly from their website.

Users who believe they may have accessed one of the potentially impacted flash drives have been advised to perform a full scan of their system. The problematic drives have been shipped with all versions of Conext ComBox (sku 865-1058) and all versions of Conext Battery Monitor (sku 865-1080-01).
 
I'm no fan of Schneider Electric.

Granted I don't have a ton of experience with them, but I do know this.

APC used to have some of the best most rugged UPS units. Then Schneider bought them, and now they are garbage.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm no fan of Schneider Electric.

Granted I don't have a ton of experience with them, but I do know this.

APC used to have some of the best most rugged UPS units. Then Schneider bought them, and now they are garbage.
Click to expand...

Tell me about it...

A few years ago, I bought an APC UPS for the server room where I work.

The first one lasted a few months until we had an outage. When the power came back on, one of the power outlets was dead on the UPS.

Put in for an RMA, and they sent me a replacement that had a whole bank of outlets that would not power on unless you turned it on manually.

Had them send me another one, and it had a bad / super noisy fan.

Then the 3rd replacement they sent me actually worked and has continued to work.

I will never buy another APC UPS ever.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm no fan of Schneider Electric.

Granted I don't have a ton of experience with them, but I do know this.

APC used to have some of the best most rugged UPS units. Then Schneider bought them, and now they are garbage.
Click to expand...

Very true. We bought a bunch of APC units which were the models introduced after S.E. acquired them. Normally you'd see failures for batteries as they age. Nope, within a few years all 8 had died from various electrical failures. Either the fan failed or an internal component failed. I helped them limp along by frankensteining parts together and soldering what I could trace.

Now I primarily buy CyberPower from Costco (better warranty) and they've been rocked solid. Only a battery failure around the 3-4 year mark.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm no fan of Schneider Electric.

Granted I don't have a ton of experience with them, but I do know this.

APC used to have some of the best most rugged UPS units. Then Schneider bought them, and now they are garbage.
Click to expand...
I have no experience with the new units as my 1500VA APC is from before the buyout I believe. Schneider's support treated me well when I had the battery die. I bought a replacement through their warehouse that was defective. One of the two pins was not lined up properly and got jammed into the battery. They sent me another battery in 3 days and I was up and going without further cost to myself. I wonder who the unlucky guy is that had to unload 2x 20 lb batteries from the recycling bin at Home Depot..
 
A lot of the inverters and batteries REQUIRE you to be connected to the internet. I hate that. You don't put infrastructure on the internet. If it's not coming from a thumb drive they'll find a way in through the WiFi or whatever. This stuff doesn't NEED to be online. You could just as easily put a little control panel on it and keep it local.
 
Went through 3 single workstation APC UPS units. Batteries died prematurely; then whole unit died. Total waste of money.
Switched to TripLite; Purchased 2 workstation units and a smaller unit for our router and switch. All 3 units have been humming along for close to 3 years not; not a single issue.
 
Didn’t realize APC got bought out, have a couple of their UPS that are still solid, but I did find a Tripplite SMART1500RM2U 1350w 2U rack UPS at an overstock store for $150 new in the box, for a backup. the cooling fan is a bit noisy but it seems to be a solid unit.

Will have to go to the Cyberpower units when my old APC units start failing.
 
I work in industrial automation and deal with Schnieder a lot, they have been acquiring a lot PLC/DCS/SIS/SCADA/HMI players lately (Invensys, Wonderware, nxtControl, etc.) their good technicians are stretched pretty thin at the moment. No complaints personally, but I have heard a lot about software/hardware QC problems from the acquired companies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top