PhD Oral Exam - Khaled Sarieddine, Information and Systems Engineering

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

The adoption rate of EVs has witnessed a significant increase in recent years driven by multiple factors, chief among which is the increasing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the drive for green cities that have promoted the adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs). Thus, the trend towards adopting electric vehicles is gaining momentum, leading to a rush to electrify the transportation system which is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gases. This shift has resulted in the creation of a new charging ecosystem to meet the growing demand for EV charging, driven by factors such as increased accessibility and flexibility. The EV charging system is composed of both physical and cyber systems, with the latter providing access and flexibility and the former consisting of high-wattage IoT charging equipment and the power grid. The governmental policies that have been put into reaching carbon neutrality and a green transportation system have been driving the hasty deployment of EVCS infrastructure.

As the EV ecosystem has advanced, it has become essential to secure it due to its critical role in providing essential services to individuals and businesses. The interconnectivity of the charging equipment to different components and lack of standardization in development and deployment makes it an attractive target for cyber attacks, with potential consequences such as disrupting and destabilizing the power grid. The thesis reviews the research contributions of the student (Khaled Sarieddine) that aid in securing the ecosystem. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the EV ecosystem, starting with a detailed examination of the literature and several live systems that allowed us to create a real-time co-simulation testbed that includes cyber and physical layer components. Moreover, we develop an advanced fingerprinting technique that aims at identifying EVCSs in the wild, while also extending our study to investigate the malware threat landscape and discover Mirai-infected EVCSs. We also investigate mobile applications as an attack vector against the power grid by studying the system interactions of 31 different mobile applications distributed worldwide. We then identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an adversary that leverages weak system design and allows initiating unlawful charging sessions. We continue to assess the security of OCPP backends worldwide and identify vulnerabilities that impact the infrastructure concerning confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA triad) where we discovered 6 zero-day vulnerabilities in each of 16 vendors worldwide. Finally, we develop an edge-based detection mechanism to detect oscillatory load attacks that leverage physical and cyber layer features. Thus, mitigating the limitation of centralized detection algorithms.