Researchers from Modat, an internet intelligence company based in The Hague, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC-NL) of the Netherlands have found 8,547 internet-facing systems at European solar projects and wind farms that should not be reachable from the internet, including exposed admin interfaces and control panels.

The researchers mapped operating solar parks and wind farms in 40 countries across the European Union, the European Free Trade Association and EU candidate states, excluding rooftop installations, and found exposed systems in 35 of them. They presented the findings this week at the ONE Conference in The Hague.

Solar accounted for 7,942 of the systems, across 34 countries. Spain had 2,766, or 35% of the total, followed by Greece with 1,860, Italy with 753 and Germany with 672, according to Modat and the NCSC-NL. Those four countries account for 76% of exposed solar systems. Hungary had 514 and Turkey 454.

Wind accounted for 605 exposed systems in 23 countries, led by Germany with 212 and Italy with 192. Spain, which led the solar count, had only 11.

The researchers said the figures are likely an undercount, because systems were counted only once they could be confidently tied to specific sites. The count covers systems, not solar panels or wind turbines, and some of the systems found control several turbines or entire wind farms.

One example in the report is the web interface of a single wind turbine, reachable from the internet, showing live production data alongside start, stop and reset controls.

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