Plug and prey: Exploiting design flaws to hijack EV charging stations

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have become a major element in the global push to combat climate change, given their ability to reduce the transportation sector’s emissions. To support the increasing number of EVs on the road, EV Charging Stations (EVCSs) are being deployed and have become a core element of the transportation infrastructure. EVCSs with individual web portals have been widely studied and proven to be vulnerable to network-based attacks. On the other hand, EVCSs that do not host web portals and cannot be accessed remotely are considered more secure. These EVCSs are generally considered to be more secure and have been overlooked in previous studies. Consequently, in this work, we present the first attack framework that exploits design flaws in this type of EVCS to hijack their operation. Our tests were performed on six actual EVCSs that follow the deployment strategy commonly preferred in North America by most operators and a few operators in Europe. We demonstrate how adversaries can successfully exploit the discussed vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to the EVCS configuration and acquire administrator privileges. We then proceed to craft multiple attacks to affect the power grid, steal money, or deteriorate EVCS availability.