Hackers Could Abuse Electric Car Chargers To Cripple the Grid, Researchers Say 126
alphadogg writes "Hackers could use vulnerable charging stations to prevent the charging of electric vehicles in a certain area, or possibly even use the vulnerabilities to cripple parts of the electricity grid, a security researcher said during the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam on Thursday. While electric cars and EV charging systems are still in their infancy, they could become a more common way to travel within the next 10 years. If that happens, it is important that the charging systems popping up in cities around the world are secure in order to prevent attackers from accessing and tempering with them, said Ofer Shezaf, of HP ArcSight. At the moment, they are not secure at all, he said."
How appropriate (Score:5, Interesting)
A few days ago, Bruce Schneier launched the Sixth Movie Plot Contest [schneier.com], with the goal of creating catastrophic but plausible things that "cyberwarriors" and evil hackers could do to destroy America. There are some fascinating ones, that's for sure, but the real point is that if you try to defend against everything that could happen, you'll waste most of your efforts.