DeepSec2016 Talk: Security and Privacy in the Current E-Mobility Charging Infrastructure – Achim Friedland

Sanna/ October 15, 2016/ Conference, Development, Security

The whole information technology strongly depends on electric power. Your servers will turn into expensive door stoppers once the power goes out. The same is true for your mobile devices and the hardware you use to get around. Hence there are efforts to extend the power grid to accommodate the demand of new and emerging technologies. The charging infrastructure requires some security considerations. You cannot simply put a cable into any power socket, throw it our of the windows, and use it for charging unknown devices and vehicles. It’s a bit more complicated. At DeepSec 2016 Achim Friedland will give you an overview on what charging really means.

In his talk Achim Friedland focuses on the emerging market of  smart and electric mobility as an interesting area of research and development for both academia and startups. Our society, he says, needs to change its ways of transport and mobility in order to save our climate and to allow everyone on this planet to enjoy the possibilities of modern mobility. Already multiple different solutions have been implemented, but neither any clear market player, nor any proven and widely adopted standard or best-practice exist today. Sadly most players in the market are primarily creating gated communities of e-mobility providers, navigation system providers and charging station operators which do not share much data or knowledge. As everyone can imagine security, privacy and usability is therefore not the primary focus of these cartels, even when they are partly funded by public money.

This talk will focus on the security and privacy aspects of e-mobility charging infrastructure. From the authentication process, over reservation, the start of a charging process, up to billing and fraud-detection this talk will give an overview on which (personal) data will be transmitted, why, and if this might be a security or privacy issue (in the future).
The talk will further give an overview on how current ICT solutions (ISO/IEC15118, OCPP, OICP, OCPI, OIOI, OCHP, …) handle those requirements and what could be done to improve the current situation. It will also give a short introduction into a new protocol design called /World Wide Charging Protocol Suite/, which tries hard not only to be a super set of all current protocols, but also a security and privacy by design approach for an enjoyable e- and smart mobility future.

Achim Friedland has a degree in computer science from the Technical University of Ilmenau, Germany. He has a strong interest in computer networking and security and published several papers in this field. He left academia to lead r&d in two data driven startups (graph databases and renewable energy). Now he has started his own company in the field of smart mobility, Open Data and privacy.