research-article

A Tale of Two Entities: Contextualizing the Security of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations on the Power Grid

Authors:

Hossam ElHussini,

Ali GhrayebAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Internet of Things, Volume 2, Issue 2

Article No.: 8, Pages 1 - 21

https://doi.org/10.1145/3437258

Published: 27 March 2021 Publication History

Abstract

With the growing market of Electric Vehicles (EV), the procurement of their charging infrastructure plays a crucial role in their adoption. Within the revolution of Internet of Things, the EV charging infrastructure is getting on board with the introduction of smart Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCS), a myriad set of communication protocols, and different entities. We provide in this article an overview of this infrastructure detailing the participating entities and the communication protocols. Further, we contextualize the current deployment of EVCSs through the use of available public data. In the light of such a survey, we identify two key concerns, the lack of standardization and multiple points of failures, which renders the current deployment of EV charging infrastructure vulnerable to an array of different attacks. Moreover, we propose a novel attack scenario that exploits the unique characteristics of the EVCSs and their protocol (such as high power wattage and support for reverse power flow) to cause disturbances to the power grid. We investigate three different attack variations; sudden surge in power demand, sudden surge in power supply, and a switching attack. To support our claims, we showcase using a real-world example how an adversary can compromise an EVCS and create a traffic bottleneck by tampering with the charging schedules of EVs. Further, we perform a simulation-based study of the impact of our proposed attack variations on the WSCC 9 bus system. Our simulations show that an adversary can cause devastating effects on the power grid, which might result in blackout and cascading failure by comprising a small number of EVCSs.

References

[1]

Samrat Acharya, Yury Dvorkin, and Ramesh Karri. 2019. Public plug-in electric vehicles+ grid data: Is a new cyberattack vector viable? Retrieved from https://arXiv:1907.08283.

[2]

Cristina Alcaraz, Javier Lopez, and Stephen Wolthusen. 2017. OCPP protocol: Security threats and challenges. IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 8, 5 (2017), 2452--2459.

[3]

Open Charge Alliance. 2014. Open charge point protocol 2.0. Open Charge Alliance (2014). Technical Report. OCPP. https://www.openchargealliance.org/downloads/.

[4]

Takafumi Anegawa. 2010. Characteristics of CHAdeMO quick charging system. World Electric Vehicle J. 4, 4 (2010), 818--822.

[5]

Manos Antonakakis, Tim April, Michael Bailey, Matt Bernhard, Elie Bursztein, Jaime Cochran, Zakir Durumeric, J. Alex Halderman, Luca Invernizzi, Michalis Kallitsis, et al. 2017. Understanding the mirai botnet. In Proceedings of the 26th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSecurity’17). 1093--1110.

[6]

Richard Baker and Ivan Martinovic. 2019. Losing the car keys: Wireless PHY-layer insecurity in EV charging. In Proceedings of the 28th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSecurity’19). 407--424.

[7]

Kaibin Bao, Hristo Valev, Manuela Wagner, and Hartmut Schmeck. 2018. A threat analysis of the vehicle-to-grid charging protocol ISO 15118. Comput. Sci.-Res. Dev. 33, 1–2 (2018), 3--12.

[8]

Aanshi Bhardwaj, Atul Sharma, Veenu Mangat, Krishan Kumar, and Renu Vig. 2019. Experimental analysis of DDoS attacks on openstack cloud platform. In Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Communication, Computing and Networking. Springer, 3--13.

[9]

Harold Booth. 2016. Draft NISTIR 8138, Vulnerability Description Ontology (VDO). https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8138/draft/documents/nistir_8138_draft.pdf.

[10]

Adrene Briones, James Francfort, Paul Heitmann, Michael Schey, Steven Schey, and J. Smart. 2012. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) power flow regulations and building codes review by the AVTA. Technical Report, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID.

[11]

PowerWorld Corporation. 2020. Power World Corporation Homepage. Retrieved from https://www.powerworld.com.

[12]

Hossam ElHusseini, Chadi Assi, Bassam Moussa, Ribal Attallah, and Ali Ghrayeb. 2020. Blockchain, AI and smart grids: The three musketeers to a decentralized EV charging infrastructure. IEEE Internet Things Mag. 3, 2 (2020), 24--29.

[13]

Hauke Engel, Russell Hensley, Stefan Knupfer, and Shivika Sahdev. 2018. Charging ahead: Electric-vehicle infrastructure demand. Technical report, McKinsey Center for Future Mobility.

[14]

Ozan Erdinc, Nikolaos G. Paterakis, Tiago D. P. Mendes, Anastasios G. Bakirtzis, and João P. S. Catalão. 2014. Smart household operation considering bi-directional EV and ESS utilization by real-time pricing-based DR. IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 6, 3 (2014), 1281--1291.

[15]

Masoud Farhoodnea, Azah Mohamed, Hussain Shareef, and Hadi Zayandehroodi. 2013. Power quality impacts of high-penetration electric vehicle stations and renewable energy-based generators on power distribution systems. Measurement 46, 8 (2013), 2423--2434.

[16]

Abdallah K. Farraj and Deepa Kundur. 2015. On using energy storage systems in switching attacks that destabilize smart grid systems. In Proceedings of the IEEE Power & Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT’15). IEEE, 1--5.

[17]

Robert J. Flores, Brendan P. Shaffer, and Jacob Brouwer. 2016. Electricity costs for an electric vehicle fueling station with Level 3 charging. Appl. Energy 169 (2016), 813--830.

[18]

A. M. Foley, I. J. Winning, and B. P. Ó. Gallachóir. 2010. State-of-the-art in electric vehicle charging infrastructure. In Proceedings of the IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference. IEEE, 1--6.

[19]

Yosra Fraiji, Lamia Ben Azzouz, Wassim Trojet, and Leila Azouz Saidane. 2018. Cyber security issues of Internet of electric vehicles. In Proceedings of the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC’18). IEEE, 1--6.

[20]

Simon Árpád Funke, Frances Sprei, Till Gnann, and Patrick Plötz. 2019. How much charging infrastructure do electric vehicles need? A review of the evidence and international comparison. Transport. Res. Part D: Transport Environ. 77 (2019), 224--242.

[21]

EV Global. 2018. Outlook 2018. Int. Energy Agency (2018), 1–71. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2018.

[22]

Raju Gottumukkala, Rizwan Merchant, Adam Tauzin, Kaleb Leon, Andrew Roche, and Paul Darby. 2019. Cyber-physical system security of vehicle charging stations. In Proceedings of the IEEE Green Technologies Conference (GreenTech’19). IEEE, 1--5.

[23]

D. Hall, M. Moultak, and N. Lutsey. 2017. Electric vehicle capitals of the world: Demonstrating the path to electric drive. The International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), March. Retrieved from https://Global-EV-Capitals_White-Paper_06032017_vF. pdf.

[24]

Kevin Harnett, Brendan Harris, Daniel Chin, Graham Watson, et al. 2018. DOE/DHS/DOT Volpe Technical Meeting on Electric Vehicle and Charging Station Cybersecurity Report. Technical Report, John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center.

[25]

Andreas Heinrich and Michael Schwaiger. 2017. ISO 15118–charging communication between plug-in electric vehicles and charging infrastructure. In Grid Integration of Electric Mobility. Springer, 213--227.

[26]

Xiaohong Huang, Cheng Xu, Pengfei Wang, and Hongzhe Liu. 2018. LNSC: A security model for electric vehicle and charging pile management based on blockchain ecosystem. IEEE Access 6 (2018), 13565--13574.

[27]

Junyeon Hwang, Myeong-in Choi, Tacklim Lee, Seonki Jeon, Seunghwan Kim, Sounghoan Park, and Sehyun Park. 2017. Energy prosumer business model using blockchain system to ensure transparency and safety. Energy Procedia 141 (2017), 194--198.

[28]

Open Charge Point Interface. 2020. Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI). https://evroaming.org/app/uploads/2020/06/OCPI-2.2-d2.pdf.

[29]

Rachel Jarvis and Paul Moses. 2019. Smart grid congestion caused by plug-in electric vehicle charging. In Proceedings of the IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference (TPEC’19). IEEE, 1--5.

[30]

G. Joos, M. De Freige, and M. Dubois. 2010. Design and simulation of a fast charging station for PHEV/EV batteries. In Proceedings of the IEEE Electrical Power and Energy Conference. IEEE, 1--5.

[31]

Asif Khan, Saim Memon, and Tariq Pervez Sattar. 2018. Analyzing integrated renewable energy and smart-grid systems to improve voltage quality and harmonic distortion losses at electric-vehicle charging stations. IEEE Access 6 (2018), 26404--26415.

[32]

Nouha Kherraf, Hyame Assem Alameddine, Sanaa Sharafeddine, Chadi Assi, and Ali Ghrayeb. 2019. Optimized provisioning of edge computing resources with heterogeneous workload in IoT networks. IEEE Trans. Netw. Service Manage. 16, 2 (2019), 459--474.

[33]

Nouha Kherraf, Sanaa Sharafeddine, Chadi M. Assi, and Ali Ghrayeb. 2019. Latency and reliability-aware workload assignment in IoT networks with mobile edge clouds. IEEE Trans. Netw. Service Manage. 16, 4 (2019), 1435--1449.

[34]

M. Kuzlu, M. Pipattanasompom, and S. Rahman. 2017. A comprehensive review of smart grid related standards and protocols. In Proceedings of the 5th International Istanbul Smart Grid and Cities Congress and Fair (ICSG’17). IEEE, 12--16.

[35]

In Lee and Kyoochun Lee. 2015. The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and challenges for enterprises. Bus. Horizons 58, 4 (2015), 431--440.

[36]

Chao Liu, Kok Keong Chai, Xiaoshuai Zhang, Eng Tseng Lau, and Yue Chen. 2018. Adaptive blockchain-based electric vehicle participation scheme in smart grid platform. IEEE Access 6 (2018), 25657--25665.

[37]

Shan Liu, Bo Chen, Takis Zourntos, Deepa Kundur, and Karen Butler-Purry. 2014. A coordinated multi-switch attack for cascading failures in smart grid. IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 5, 3 (2014), 1183--1195.

[38]

Esther Mengelkamp, Benedikt Notheisen, Carolin Beer, David Dauer, and Christof Weinhardt. 2018. A blockchain-based smart grid: Towards sustainable local energy markets. Comput. Sci.-Res. Dev. 33, 1–2 (2018), 207--214.

[39]

Glenn Sean Morrison. 2018. Threats and mitigation of DDoS cyberattacks against the U.S. power grid via EV charging. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1535490827978036.

[40]

Mustafa A. Mustafa, Ning Zhang, Georgios Kalogridis, and Zhong Fan. 2013. Smart electric vehicle charging: Security analysis. In Proceedings of the IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT’13). IEEE, 1--6.

[41]

Myriam Neaimeh and Peter Bach Andersen. 2020. Mind the gap-open communication protocols for vehicle grid integration. Energy Info. 3, 1 (2020), 1.

[42]

OCPP. 2018. OCPP 2.0 Part 2: Specification. Technical Report, OCPP.

[43]

Open Charge Map. 2018. The global public registry of electric vehicle charging locations. https://openchargemap.org/site/develop#api.

[44]

IEA Global EV Outlook. 2020. IEA: Paris. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2020.

[45]

Richard M. Pratt and Thomas E. Carroll. 2019. Vehicle charging infrastructure security. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE’19). IEEE, 1--5.

[46]

Imran Rahman, Pandian M. Vasant, Balbir Singh Mahinder Singh, M. Abdullah-Al-Wadud, and Nadia Adnan. 2016. Review of recent trends in optimization techniques for plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicle charging infrastructures. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 58 (2016), 1039--1047.

[47]

Juan E. Rubio, Cristina Alcaraz, and Javier Lopez. 2018. Addressing security in OCPP: Protection against man-in-the-middle attacks. In Proceedings of the 9th IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS’18). IEEE, 1--5.

[48]

Yaroslava Ryabova. 2018. Don’t be sure charging your electric car is secure enough. Retrieved from https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/electric-cars-charging-problems/20652/.

[49]

Dmitry Skylar. 2018. ChargePoint Home Security Research. Technical Report. Kaspersky Lab Security Services.

[50]

Margaret Smith and Johnathan Castellano. 2015. Costs Associated with Non-residential Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment: Factors to Consider in the Implementation of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations. Technical Report.

[51]

Saleh Soltan, Prateek Mittal, and H. Vincent Poor. 2018. BlackIoT: IoT Botnet of high wattage devices can disrupt the power grid. In Proceedings of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIXSecurity’18). 15--32.

[52]

Tom Spring. 2018. Critical Bug Patched in Schneider Electric Vehicle Charging Station. Retrieved from https://threatpost.com/critical-bug-patched-in-schneider-electric-vehicle-charging-station/140370/.

[53]

Zhou Su, Yuntao Wang, Qichao Xu, Minrui Fei, Yu-Chu Tian, and Ning Zhang. 2018. A secure charging scheme for electric vehicles with smart communities in energy blockchain. IEEE Internet Things J. (2018).

[54]

C. E. Thomas. 2009. Fuel cell and battery electric vehicles compared. Int. J. Hydrogen Energy 34, 15 (2009), 6005--6020.

[55]

Mart van der Kam, Roland Ferweda, and Rudi N. A. Bekkers. 2020. Developing roaming protocols for EV charging: Insights from the field. In Proceedings of the 8th Transport Research Arena (TRA’20).

[56]

Yu Wu, Alexandre Ravey, Daniela Chrenko, and Abdellatif Miraoui. 2019. Demand side energy management of EV charging stations by approximate dynamic programming. Energy Conv. Manage. 196 (2019), 878--890.

[57]

Jia Ying Yong, Vigna K. Ramachandaramurthy, Kang Miao Tan, and Nadarajah Mithulananthan. 2015. A review on the state-of-the-art technologies of electric vehicle, its impacts and prospects. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 49 (2015), 365--385.

[58]

Y. S. Wong and K. T. Chau. 2006. Battery sizing for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. J. Asian Electric Vehicles 4, 2 (2006), 899--904.

[59]

Yongmin Zhang, Jiayi Chen, Lin Cai, and Jianping Pan. 2019. Expanding EV charging networks considering transportation pattern and power supply limit. IEEE Trans. Smart Grid 10, 6 (2019), 6332--6342.

[60]

Yutong Zhao, Hong Huang, Xi Chen, Baoqun Zhang, Yiguo Zhang, Yuan Jin, Qian Zhang, Lin Cheng, and Yanxia Chen. 2019. Charging load allocation strategy of EV charging station considering charging mode. World Electric Vehicle J. 10, 2 (2019), 47.

Cited By

Kern DKrauß CHollick M(2024)Attack Analysis and Detection for the Combined Electric Vehicle Charging and Power Grid DomainsProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3664476.3664512(1-12)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3664476.3664512
Anwar AHalabi TZulkernine M(2024)A Dynamic Threat Prevention Framework for Autonomous Vehicle Networks based on Ruin-theoretic Security Risk AssessmentACM Journal on Autonomous Transportation Systems10.1145/36605271:4(1-28)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660527
Sarieddine KSayed MTorabi SAttallah RJafarigiv DAssi CDebbabi MQuek TGao DZhou JCardenas A(2024)Uncovering Covert Attacks on EV Charging Infrastructure: How OCPP Backend Vulnerabilities Could Compromise Your SystemProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3644999(977-989)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634737.3644999
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A Tale of Two Entities: Contextualizing the Security of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations on the Power Grid
1. Security and privacy
  1. Systems security

Recommendations

Voltage stability improvement of distribution networks using reactive power capability of electric vehicle charging stations
Highlights
- Introducing a novel approach to improve voltage stability despite fluctuating demand in EV charging stations.
- Utilization of reactive power capabilities of EV charging stations for voltage stability improvement.
- Integration of ...
Abstract
Modern power networks are affected by the increasing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) driven by environmental concerns. Electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) pose serious challenges due to the fluctuating charging demand leading to ...
Graphical abstract

Display Omitted
Electric Vehicle Charging Station Planning Based on Multiple-Population Hybrid Genetic Algorithm
ICCECT '12: Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Control Engineering and Communication Technology

Establishing electric vehicle charging station's minimum comprehensive cost model which considers charging station' construction and operation cost and the cost of charging people. According to the characteristics of the electric vehicle charging ...
EV charging: separation of green and brown energy using IoT
UbiComp '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct

The energy drivers use to charge their Electric Vehicles (EVs) comes from various sources. Of those, some are renewable green energy sources such as solar photovoltaic systems (SolarPV) and home storage battery whilst some are called brown sources such ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Internet of Things

ACM Transactions on Internet of Things Volume 2, Issue 2

May 2021

176 pages

EISSN:2577-6207

DOI:10.1145/3458923

Editors:
Schahram Dustdar
TU Wien, Austria
,
Gian Pietro Picco
University of Trento, Italy

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Journal Family

ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 27 March 2021

Accepted: 01 November 2020

Revised: 01 September 2020

Received: 01 February 2020

Published in TIOT Volume 2, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Funding Sources

NSERC

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

25
Total Citations
View Citations
564
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)170
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)26

Reflects downloads up to 06 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kern DKrauß CHollick M(2024)Attack Analysis and Detection for the Combined Electric Vehicle Charging and Power Grid DomainsProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3664476.3664512(1-12)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3664476.3664512
Anwar AHalabi TZulkernine M(2024)A Dynamic Threat Prevention Framework for Autonomous Vehicle Networks based on Ruin-theoretic Security Risk AssessmentACM Journal on Autonomous Transportation Systems10.1145/36605271:4(1-28)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3660527
Sarieddine KSayed MTorabi SAttallah RJafarigiv DAssi CDebbabi MQuek TGao DZhou JCardenas A(2024)Uncovering Covert Attacks on EV Charging Infrastructure: How OCPP Backend Vulnerabilities Could Compromise Your SystemProceedings of the 19th ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3634737.3644999(977-989)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3634737.3644999
Goerke NMärtz ABaumgart I(2024)Who Controls Your Power Grid? On the Impact of Misdirected Distributed Energy Resources on Grid StabilityProceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems10.1145/3632775.3661943(46-54)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632775.3661943
Shirvani SBaseri YGhorbani A(2024)Evaluation Framework for Electric Vehicle Security Risk AssessmentIEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems10.1109/TITS.2023.330766025:1(33-56)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TITS.2023.3307660
Li YHanif U(2024)SR-Mamba: Data-Driven EV Charging Load-Altering Attack Detection and Localization Using Selective State based Model2024 6th International Conference on Electronic Engineering and Informatics (EEI)10.1109/EEI63073.2024.10696761(340-346)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EEI63073.2024.10696761
Dehrouyeh FYang LBadrkhani Ajaei FShami A(2024)On TinyML and Cybersecurity: Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Use CaseIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.343719212(108703-108730)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3437192
Prabawa PChoi D(2024)Distributionally robust PV planning and curtailment considering cyber attacks on electric vehicle charging under PV/load uncertaintiesEnergy Reports10.1016/j.egyr.2024.03.02511(3436-3449)Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2024.03.025
Aljohani TAlmutairi A(2024)A comprehensive survey of cyberattacks on EVs: Research domains, attacks, defensive mechanisms, and verification methodsDefence Technology10.1016/j.dt.2024.06.009Online publication date: Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dt.2024.06.009
Aslam MLi WLiu WQi YSaleem URiaz S(2024)A review of integrated modeling and simulation of control and communication systems in Smart GridComputers and Electrical Engineering10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109553119(109553)Online publication date: Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2024.109553
Show More Cited By

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents