Cyber Security Seminar by Denis Donadel MSc - A journey on Electric Vehicle Charging system cybersecurity

25 October 2022 12:00 till 12:45 - Location: online via zoom | Add to my calendar

Meeting details

Meeting link (Zoom)
Meeting ID: 941 7649 5642
Passcode: 351587

A journey on Electric Vehicle Charging system cybersecurity

Pushed by the climate crisis, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are spreading fast. Therefore, charging stations are being installed worldwide. To support the high energy demand, the new generation of charging stations employs the Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) paradigm to enable high-level communications between vehicles and charging columns. V2G is employed for many purposes: for instance, cars can communicate with the grid to smartly manage the charging process and to pay for the energy delivered. In such a novel and highly interconnected cyber-physical system, there is a vast space for potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

In this talk, I will overview some cybersecurity risks in the EV charging environment. In particular, I will present EVExchange, the first relay attack to steal energy during a charging session in a V2G communication: i.e., charging the attacker's car while letting the victim pay for it. Furthermore, I will illustrate how an electric vehicle can be authenticated by only looking at the energy delivered without data access.

Short bio

Denis Donadel received his MSc in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Padua, Italy, in 2020. He is now a Ph.D. Student in Brain, Mind and Computer Science (BMCS) at the University of Padua where he joined the SPRITZ Security and Privacy Research Group under the supervision of Prof. Mauro Conti. Together with his academic course, Denis is also working with Omitech SRL as part of his high apprenticeship program. During the 2021 Summer, he was granted the New Generation Internet (NGI) Explorers grant to support a collaboration with the University of Washington (Seattle, USA). His research interests lie primarily in Cyber-Physical Systems security, focusing particulary on Vehicles Security and Critical Infrastructures Security.