EVs increase cyber security risks

Scrolling through my news feed this morning, I came across this article at Grist that analyzes ways that electric cars could compromise our grid. The piece starts off on a light note, highlighting a wide-spread EV charging station hack that switches out the normal greeting for a picture of Biden saying ‘I did that!’. Apparently, such pranks have become pretty common:

“Such shenanigans are increasingly common. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, hackers tweaked charging stations along the Moscow–Saint Petersburg motorway in Russia to greet users with anti-Putin messages. Around the same time, cyber vandals in England programmed public chargers to broadcast pornography. Just this year, the hosts of YouTube channel The Kilowatts tweeted a video showing it was possible to take control of an Electrify America station’s operating system.”

The worry, of course, is that the hacking becomes more sinister. The article quotes a Sandia Labs researcher whose done research on the potential security issues related to EVs and supporting infrastructure: 

“They found everything from the possibility of hackers being able to track users to vulnerabilities that “may expose home and corporate [Wi-Fi] networks to a breach.” Another study, led by Concordia University and published last year in the journal Computers & Security, highlighted more than a dozen classes of “severe vulnerabilities,” including the ability to turn chargers on and off remotely as well as deploy malware.”

I don’t think the risks associated with EVs will surprise many on this forum. It’s quite intuitive that the more advanced a digital system becomes, the larger the attack surface is. What’s more, hackers have been taking over cars for use now through their infotainment systems etc. Remember the Jeep hack?