The Expert Podcast

Here's another interesting development in the world of cybersecurity and even electric vehicles That may not have been considered as electric vehicles become more popular And more common Remember right now there's only about 1% of vehicles on the road are electric vehicles As this becomes more popular this is going to need to be more chargers and more activity on those chargers
And remember An EV charging station is simply An internet connected appliance That provides electricity to charge your vehicle And as you know when you plug in that charger cable Your vehicle recognize it It goes through a communications process you may have a a an account with a provider Maybe it's Tesla maybe another provider And it Tracks that in a connects with the internet through that charging station
It will tell your vehicle how much voltage is coming in what status the network is at Maybe the payment information Well since it's on the internet it's also subject to security problems Just like any other internet device your laptop your phone it can be hacked Cybersecurity is a problem So here's an article automotive news major Car industry publication High profile incidents of hacked EV charging stations Spotlight on vulnerabilities Well I don't know if anybody's really thought too much about this Not only does it hack the charging station but also hacks your car they might be able to get into your vehicle change Maybe the Dashboard screens Maybe change the programming of your computer chips Maybe track your location your car has GPS tracks your location maybe it disables your alarm system
So again this is thinking way outside of the box but what if A hacking group Was able to hack into one charging station location Let's call it Well here I see that this Event in Nashville Tennessee let's call it Nashville Tennessee And they find a location in Nashville Tennessee That's an EV charging station that has no security and they hack into it and they don't disable it They don't shut it down But what they're able to do is connect to all these vehicles and maybe they find a way to go through the Charging system And disable the security system for that car And To get the code for the chip That is the remote that makes you start the car or get in your car
And they also are able to monitor your GPS Well now If they're in the area they can know where the cars are that have no security system They have a hack chip a clone chip And they know when you're outside the vehicle and where it is But they can steal your car Is that farfetched and maybe maybe the technology isn't there Maybe the EV charging doesn't allow that into your car Maybe it just provides electricity I don't know But When do you want to know Do you want to know that in advance when they're starting to put this Security protection into the systems or in the cars Or do you want to find out after a hundred cars get stolen Or disabled Or bricked maybe they'll start doing ransomware on cars Who knows It's not yet a known type of threat but what is known is charging stations are being hacked
Maybe they're just hacking them to get free electricity free charging I don't know
But there's been many examples of hacks that we've seen cybersecurity events In other types of electronic devices Like CNC machining equipment hospital equipment You've seen it in the news where hackers have hacked into a system and shut down ventilators Given people too many drugs through their IV Because it's an internet control device If you think That an EV charging station is going to have More security than a hospital ventilator Think again You would think that hospital administrators the people who design those systems would really be concerned about security because it's a life or death Machine Where people with cars might think well they're just charging the car What do we care I'm not saying that's what their point of view is but Think about the difference between the two and there has been hospitals and Eve IVs and ventilators that have been hacked big high profile events And Cars are now starting to be hacked Just something to be aware of It doesn't mean you should throw away your EV or You know abandoned the idea It's just think about where this is going And if you're in the automotive business you might want to think about How this applies to charging stations leave your comments below let us know what you think is this Conspiracy theory is this Just far-fetched or is this something that might be worthy of consideration To avoid security problems in the future