Supervisors

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Abstract

Power-Line Communication (PLC) has seen a wide adoption in power grid and critical infrastructure applications in recent years. For example, for the interconnection of smart meters. Another example is the Combined Charging System (CCS), one of the most widely adopted DC fast charging standards for Electric Vehicles (EVs), which uses PLC for the communication between the vehicle and the charging station. This communication channel is used to exchange safety critical information, such as battery temperature, maximum charging voltage and current, and state of charge.

Unfortunately, our recent research has shown that the PLC communication used by CCS is vulnerable to wireless attacks on the physical layer [1, 2]. We demonstrated that an adversary can eavesdrop on the communication and showed that the charging communication can easily be disrupted. Given the nature of PLC and its tendency to crosstalk, both attacks can be conducted wirelessly and from a distance.

In this project, the student will explore PLC security in different contexts, such as smart homes and smart metering infrastructure. The focus will be on adapting and replicating wireless attacks from previous work.

Prerequisites: Some familiarity in the area of digital signal processing and with Python.

Useful URLs: https://github.com/ssloxford/brokenwire
https://gitlab.com/rbaker/hpgp-emis-rx

References:

[1] Baker and Martinovic. "Losing the car keys: Wireless PHY-layer insecurity
in EV charging." USENIX, 2019.

[2] Köhler et al. "Brokenwire: Wireless disruption of ccs electric vehicle
charging." Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium
2023.