L R AS Published on Monday 13 September 2021 - n° 373 - Categories:electric vehicles

Are smart electric vehicle chargers safe?

Smart chargers allow vehicle owners to remotely monitor and manage the state of charge, speed and timing of their car's chargers, among other functions. They can be integrated with

to a home's solar system and storage to provide greater control and flexibility over one's energy consumption.

Pen Test Partners, a security consultancy, recently spent 18 months investigating the security of the six leading smart chargers on the market. Almost all of them presented some level of security risk, ranging from access to user data, to the possibility of hijacking "millions" of smart chargers.

These smart chargers are managed by software, which defines who can charge, when they can charge, how much they can charge.

When the chargers are connected, they can be attacked. The effects are different if it is a public charger where the risk is electricity theft by charging several different vehicles, or worse a cyber-attack by putting many different chargers into operation. If the charger is private, the consequences are access to user data. From the charger, one can access different information in the house

Experts believe that securing chargers is possible with secure firmware

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/09/09/how-safe-are-smart-ev-chargers/

PV Magazine of 9 September 2021

Editor's note Battery chargers will follow the same evolution as computers: at the beginning, people don't pay attention to security. Then, crooks make the public nervous. Then progress is made to protect users.

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