Security News > 2022 > March > Electric Vehicle DC charging tripped by a wireless hack

Researchers from the University of Oxford published details of a vulnerability in the Combined Charging System that has the potential to abort charging.

The Combined Charging System is one of the plethora of standards in the EV charging world, and allows DC fast charging.

As well as taking in all that lovely charge, the EV and the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment swap messages concerning how charged things are, the maximum possible current and so on.

The researchers created a lab testbed that consisted of the same HPGP modems used in most EVs and charging stations at the victim end, and a software defined radio replete with a 1W RF amplifier on an antenna the team made themselves.

The off-the-shelf gear managed to abort the charging process from up to 10 meters away from the target with a power budget of 10mW. The closer one got, the less power was needed to cause a 100 percent packet loss.

Before EV vehicle owners panic about their beloved trundle-wagons being targeted in this way, the attack only interrupts the charging Researchers found no evidence of any long-term damage caused by the attack.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/03/30/brokenwire/