Control Logic Attacks and Defenses for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Principal Investigator: 
Wookjin Choi, assistant professor, computer science, Virginia State University

Co-Principal Investigators: 
Irfan Ahmed, associate professor, computer science, Virginia Commonwealth University

Kevin Heaslip, professor, CCI Fellow, civil and environmental engineering, Virginia Tech

Control Logic Attacks and Defenses for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Project Description: 
In this project, Virginia State University, a historically Black public university is the lead institute in collaboration with two research tier-1 (R1) universities (VCU and Virginia Tech) to develop research capacity on cyber physical systems, specifically electric vehicle charging stations. Electric vehicles are increasingly integrated with smart cities to minimize fossil fuel dependency and reduce carbon emissions in urban areas. They require efficient and smart charging stations to coordinate charging activities with service providers and handle power outages to ensure 24/7 service. With the rapid increase of electric vehicles, our reliance on fully connected electric vehicle charging stations has increased substantially. Concern about cybersecurity risk and resilience of charging stations may reduce the adoption of electric vehicles.

The team is built directly on the individual strengths of three research team members: Wookjin Choi (VSU) in anomaly detection with machine learning, Irfan Ahmed (VCU) in system security and forensics, and Kevin Heaslip (Virginia Tech) in the measurement of transportation resilience, transportation engineering, public transportation, and urban transportation planning. Further, Virginia Tech has a testbed on electric vehicle charging stations while VCU has research capacity on industrial control systems used in the charging stations. To this end, the proposed research incorporates three tasks: 1) Creating attack datasets on electric vehicle charging stations, 2) Network-level detection and prevention of control logic attacks on charging stations, and 3) Endpoint detection of compromised field devices in charging stations.