Design of joint cyberattacks on electric vehicle charging via pricing and traffic manipulation to threaten secure operation of power systems

Abstract

The rapid development of electric vehicles (EVs) has strengthened the coupling between transportation and power systems. Meanwhile, the continuous growth in demand for EV charging would significantly impact the secure operation of power systems. Considering the vulnerability of vehicle navigation communication networks, this paper proposes a novel and practical joint cyber-attack scheme to manipulate the charging and route planning results of EV charging navigation. This cyber-attack can minimize both the charging price at the target EV charging station (EVCS) and the driving time required to reach the target EVCS, thus threatening the secure operation of power systems by attracting excessive EVs to charge at the target EVCS. Firstly, a two-level optimization model is proposed to identify the target EVCS based on the partially observable distribution network. This model identifies the EVCS that pose the greatest threat to the secure operation of power systems. Subsequently, a cyber-attack model is developed to manipulate the driving time of EVs to the target EVCS. The attack vector is designed to be stealthy to evade detection and sparse to minimize attack cost. Finally, based on the relationship between charging price and demand, an adaptive cyber-attack model for EV charging price is designed. When the joint cyber-attack is launched, EVs can be reasonably attracted to the target EVCS, regardless of the charging preferences of EV drivers. The coupled test system consisting of an IEEE 33-bus system and a 46-node transportation system verifies the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and model.