Hacking the smart grid by lying to EV charger sensors: distorting EV charging at scale. ⚡⛽⛽⚰️🏴☠
A group of academic security researchers from the U.S. shared a cyberattack framework that targets federated EV charging management systems (CMS). The proposed attack causes grid load oscillations, extends EV charging times, increases customer queues, and distorts and destabilizes the grid.
The attack targets multiple EV stations, injecting stealthy false data (SOC, voltage, demand, frequency) into sensor inputs and tricking the optimizer rather than directly controlling hardware. The smart CMS responds by adjusting the load, causing distortions and grid overload.
The attacker never touches voltages or currents directly, instead falsifying sensor data by as little as 1-2%, yet the result leads to grid-level frequency deviations. Impressive.
The authors do not publicly share any practical testing of this attack, but the provided data are convincing, and the approach is practical and should work. This means we have a new attack on smart grid CMS.
Enjoy the read, and share it with your colleagues and friends - especially those who should know these details for work. And please stay safe!
More details:
PHANTOM: Physics-Aware Adversarial Attacks against Federated Learning - Coordinated EV Charging Management System [PDF]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22381
