Public EV Charging Stations Risky

If you can, you are better off charging at home. Not everyone has that option.

Since both the car charging port and the public charger are network interfaces that have to communicate both in and out, they – and you – are at risk.

What is the risk? It includes disrupting the charging process, stealing electricity and gaining unauthorized control.

A security researcher released a paper including the code needed to do the exploit to document the flaws.

Since organizations that run public chargers want to be able to centrally manage them, they use a charging station management system (CSMS), which allows them, and hackers, to manage transactions, obtain vehicle IDs and other things.

The researchers even figured out how to just completely crash the charging station.

On the vehicle side, most EV charging ports can be forced open without setting off the vehicle alarm. Hardware to debug the port (AKA roll your own hack) is widely available.

Since I tend to keep this blog PG I am not going to make more than an oblique reference to other risky adult activities, but you can probably figure out where I am not going.

Bottom line is that connecting your car to a network that you don’t control is no different than plugging your phone into a charging station at the airport. Both may lead to viruses that are hard to cure.

Caveat emptor.

Credit: Cybernews

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