Computer-security researchers say new "smart" meters that are designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently also have flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid in ways that had been impossible.

At the least, the vulnerabilities open the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills.

These flaws also could get hackers a key step closer to exploiting one of the most dangerous capabilities of the new technology: the ability to remotely turn someone else's power on and off.

The attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters - which can be situated outside a home - and reprogramming them. Or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians Inc. The firm was hired by three utilities to study their smart meters' resistance to attack.

These utilities, which Wright would not name, have made small deployments of smart meters and plan to roll out the technology to hundreds of thousands of customers, he said.

There is no evidence the security flaws have been exploited, although Wright said a utility could have been hacked without knowing it. InGuardians said it is working with the utilities to fix the problems.

Power companies are aggressively rolling out the new meters. In the U.S., more than 8 million smart meters have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly 60 million should be in place by 2020, according to a list of publicly announced projects kept by The Edison Foundation, an organization focused on the electric industry.

Unlike traditional electric meters that merely record power use - and then must be read in person once a month by a meter reader - smart meters measure consumption in real time. By being networked to computers in electric utilities, the new meters can signal people or their appliances to take certain actions, such as reducing power use when electricity prices spike.

But the very interactivity that makes smart meters so attractive also makes them vulnerable to hackers because each meter essentially is a computer connected to a vast network.

There are few public studies on the meters' resistance to attack, in part because the technology is new. However, last summer, Mike Davis, a researcher with IOActive Inc., showed that a computer worm could hop between meters in a power grid with smart meters, giving criminals control over the meters.

Source: Associated Press