Hackers could start abusing electric car chargers to cripple the grid

L33tdawg: Ofer's slides along with all other presentation materials can be downloaded from http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2013ams/materials/

Hackers could use vulnerable charging stations to prevent the charging of electric vehicles in a certain area, or possibly even use the vulnerabilities to cripple parts of the electricity grid, a security researcher said during the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam on Thursday.

While electric cars and EV charging systems are still in their infancy, they could become a more common way to travel within the next 10 years. If that happens, it is important that the charging systems popping up in cities around the world are secure in order to prevent attackers from accessing and tempering with them, said Ofer Shezaf, product manager security solutions at HP ArcSight. At the moment, they are not secure at all, he said.

“Essentially a charging station is a computer on the street,” Shezaf said. “And it is not just a computer on the street but it is also a network on the street.” Users want their cars to charge as quickly as possible but not all electric cars can be charged at once because the providers of charging stations have to take the local and regional circuit capacity in mind, said Shezaf. “Therefore we need smart charging,” he said.