Search

Since its introduction in 2012, the Combined Charging System (CCS) has emerged as the leading technology for EV fast charging in Europe, North America and parts of Asia. The charging communication of CCS is defined by the ISO 15118 standards, which have been improved over the years. Most notably, in 2014, important security features such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) and usability enhancements such as Plug and Charge were introduced. In this paper, we conduct the first measurement study of publicly deployed CCS DC charging stations to capture the state of deployment for different protocol versions and to better understand the attack surface of the EV charging infrastructure. In our evaluation, we examine 325 chargers manufactured between April 2013 and June 2023, and installed as late as May 2024 by 26 manufacturers across 4 European countries. We find that only 12% of the charging stations we analyzed implement TLS at all, leaving all others vulnerable to attacks that have already been demonstrated many years ago. We observe an increasing trend in support for ISO 15118-2 over the years, reaching 70% of chargers manufactured in 2023. We further notice that most chargers use a decade-old firmware for their HomePlug modems, which could contain vulnerabilities that have been patched since. Finally, we discuss design flaws with the Public Key Infrastructure system used in EV charging, and propose changes to improve the adoption and availability of TLS.

Many modern devices, including critical infrastructures, depend on the reliable operation of electrical power conversion systems. The small size and versatility of switched-mode power converters has resulted in their widespread adoption. Whereas transformer-based systems passively convert voltage, switched-mode converters feature an actively regulated feedback loop, which relies on accurate sensor measurements. Previous academic work has shown that many types of sensors are vulnerable to Intentional Electromagnetic Interference (IEMI) attacks, and it has been postulated that power converters, too, are affected. In this paper, we present the first detailed study on switched-mode power converters by targeting their voltage and current sensors through IEMI attacks. We present a theoretical framework for evaluating IEMI attacks against feedback-based power supplies in the general case. We experimentally validate our theoretical predictions by analyzing multiple AC-DC and DC-DC converters, automotive grade current sensors, and dedicated battery chargers, and demonstrate the systematic vulnerability of all examined categories under real-world conditions. Finally, we demonstrate that sensor attacks on power converters can cause permanent damage to Li-Ion batteries during the charging process.

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a powerful tool for parallel computing. In the past years the performance and capabilities of GPUs have increased, and the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) - a parallel computing architecture - has been developed by NVIDIA to utilize this performance in general purpose computations. Here we show for the first time a possible application of GPU for environmental studies serving as a basement for decision making strategies. A stochastic Lagrangian particle model has been developed on CUDA to estimate the transport and the transformation of the radionuclides from a single point source during an accidental release. Our results show that parallel implementation achieves typical acceleration values in the order of 80-120 times compared to CPU using a single-threaded implementation on a 2.33 GHz desktop computer. Only very small differences have been found between the results obtained from GPU and CPU simulations, which are comparable with the effect of stochastic transport phenomena in atmosphere. The relatively high speedup with no additional costs to maintain this parallel architecture could result in a wide usage of GPU for diversified environmental applications in the near future., Comment: 5 figures

The axisymmetric component of the large-scale solar magnetic fields has a pronounced poleward branch at higher latitudes. In order to clarify the origin of this branch we construct an axisymmetric model of the passive transport of the mean poloidal magnetic field in the convective zone, including meridional circulation, anisotropic diffusivity, turbulent pumping and density pumping. For realistic values of the transport coefficients we find that diffusivity is prevalent, and the latitudinal distribution of the field at the surface simply reflects the conditions at the bottom of the convective zone. Pumping effects concentrate the field to the bottom of the convective zone; a significant part of this pumping occurs in a shallow subsurface layer, normally not resolved in dynamo models. The phase delay of the surface poloidal field relative to the bottom poloidal field is found to be small. These results support the double dynamo wave models, may be compatible with some form of a mixed transport scenario, and exclude the passive transport theory for the origin of the polar branch., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures; Solar Physics, in press