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So-called "smart meters" have built-in vulnerabilities that may let hackers steal electricity from you, inflating your power bill.

InGuardians, a security firm, was hired by utilities to determine how their meters would behave in a hack attack. They studied smart meters from five different manufacturers (not necessarily including the one shown).

The researchers found hackers could easily steal meters and reprogram them. Or they could just sit nearby and hack into the meter with a laptop. Hackers could also "impersonate" the meter in communications with the utility, inflating the victim's bill or lowering the hacker's bill. Large-scale attacks on the grid are also possible. Some of what researchers termed the most "egregious" security flaws in data management have been known about for a full decade.

Smart meters are used in more than 8 million U.S. homes and are predicted to reach 60 million by 2020. They allow power consumption to be monitored in real time. A major plus is that they can take energy- or money-saving actions, such as cutting consumption when rates spike. But it is this versatility that opens them to attack.

See Associated Press.