System designed to detect and track potential attacks on electric vehicle charging stations

MAS-CS architecture and interactions between components. Credit: International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2026.100846

The increasing adoption of electric vehicles is creating growing demand for charging infrastructure, driving a transformation in access to and use of energy through the controlled deployment of fast, efficient and secure charging stations.

In response to potential cyber threats, researchers from the NICS group at the University of Malaga have devised an innovative solution designed to combat increasingly frequent cyberattacks on electric vehicle charging stations. It has been published in the journal International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection.

"These stations integrate a large number of components, both physical and digital, whose complexity not only creates new security vulnerabilities but also significantly expands the attack surface," says Cristina Alcaraz, professor at the UMA School of Computer Engineering and one of the authors of this work. She also points out that potential threats include fraud or theft of energy by end users, as well as attacks against the operational capacity of the power grid itself.