학술논문

EV Charging Infrastructure Discovery to Contextualize Its Deployment Security
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management IEEE Trans. Netw. Serv. Manage. Network and Service Management, IEEE Transactions on. 21(1):1287-1301 Feb, 2024
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Ecosystems
Security
Charging stations
Malware
Power grids
Microprogramming
Protocols
Electric vehicle charging ecosystem
malware
fingerprint
forensics
power grid
darknet
Language
ISSN
1932-4537
2373-7379
Abstract
Electric Vehicle Charging Stations (EVCSs) have been shown to be susceptible to remote exploitation due to manufacturer-induced vulnerabilities, demonstrated by recent attacks on this ecosystem. What is more alarming is that compromising these high-wattage IoT systems can be leveraged to perform coordinated oscillatory load attacks against the power grid which could lead to the instability of this critical infrastructure. In this paper, we investigate a previously sidelined aspect of EVCS security. We analyze the deployment security of EVCSs and highlight operator-induced vulnerabilities rendering the ecosystem exposed to remote intrusions. We create an advanced discovery technique that leverages Web interface artifacts to dynamically discover new charging station vendors. As a result, we uncover 33,320 charging station management systems in the wild. Consequently, we study the deployment security of the charging stations and identify that 28,046 EVCSs were found to be vulnerable to eavesdropping, and around 24% of the studied EVCSs are deployed with default configurations exposing the ecosystem to a Mirai-like attack vector. Aligned with this finding, we discover that the EVCS ecosystem has been targeted by nefarious IoT malware such as Mirai and its variants. This demonstrates that further security measures should be implemented by vendors and operators to ensure the security of this vital ecosystem. Consequently, we provide a comprehensive recommendation for securing the deployment of EVCSs.