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Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity

CIC EV charger attack dataset 2024 (CICEVSE2024)

Multi-dimensional dataset for electric vehicle charging station security

The goal of this work is to contribute to ongoing cybersecurity research on electric vehicle charging stations by generating and publishing a dataset containing benign and attack scenarios. The attack scenarios include network and host attacks on the EV charger (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment – EVSE) in both idle and charging states. Network attacks consist of various Reconnaissance and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, while host attacks include Backdoor and Cryptojacking. The main contribution of this research are:

  • Creating and publishing a comprehensive dataset that comprises power consumption data, network traffic captures, and host activities of the EVSE under both benign and attack conditions.
  • Conducting statistical analysis on the datasets, evaluating specific features to determine their suitability for tasks such as behavioural profiling and anomaly detection.
  • Assessing the suitability of the dataset for binary and multi-class classification of both benign and attack scenarios using machine learning algorithms.

EV charging station lab setup

The testbed configuration setup comprises of an operational Level 2 charging station, EVSE-A, a Raspberry Pi and communication equipment. Raspberry Pis are used for the implementation of the Electric Vehicle Communication Controller (EVCC), EVSE-B, Power Monitor, and the local Charging Station Monitoring System (CSMS). The EVSE-A is configured to communicate with the remote CSMS platform using OCPP protocol. EVSE-B communicates with the EVCC and the local CSMS using ISO15118 and OCPP respectively. The power consumption of the EVSE-B is also monitored by another Raspberry Pi using a wattmeter and I2C protocol.

Dataset description

The dataset comprises three main data sources:

  • Power consumption of EVSE-B
  • Network Traffic for EVSE-A and EVSE-B
  • HPC and Kernel Events for EVSE-B

The table provided below outlines the labeling scheme employed for the host and power consumption dataset that has already been processed and utilized in the associated paper publication. This serves as a guide when using the individual unprocessed CSV files.

Column ID Entry
State Idle, Charging
Scenario Recon, DoS, Cryptojacking, Backdoor, Benign
Attack Cryptojacking, Backdoor, None (ie. Benign), tcp-port-scan, service-version-detection, os-fingerpriting, aggressive-scan, syn-stealth-scan, vulnerability-scan, slowloris-scan, upd-flood, icmp-flood, pshack-flood, icmp-fragmentation, tcp-flood, syn-flood, synonymousIP-flood
Label Attack, Benign
Interface OCPP, ISO15118


Note:

  • State: For EVSE-B, the idle state represents the case where there is no V2G communication (i.e. no connection or ISO15118 communication with the EVCC). Conversely, the charging state refers to the situation when the EVCC is connected and actively communicating.
  • Interface: Refers to the interface of EVSE-B that was targeted by the malicious actor during the network attacks.

Power consumption of EVSE-B

The power consumed by the main board or Secondary Equipment Communication Controller (SECC) of the EVSE is largely not monitored by the CSMS. However, this data might serve as a good Indicator of Compromise. We use the I2C wattmeter to monitor and log the power consumed by the EVSE-B (raspberry pi) under benign and attack conditions. The dataset for benign and all attack scenarios are labelled combined into one CSV file. Dataset Features:

Feature Description
Time Timestamp of sample
Shunt_voltage (mV) Voltage drop that occurs across a shunt resistor of I2C Wattmeter
Bus_voltage DC Voltage supply
Current_mA EVSE-B Current consumption
Power_mw EVSE-B Power consumption

 

Network traffic for EVSE-A and EVSE-B

The complete network traffic captures for benign and attack scenarios are presented as .pcap files. The NFStream python library has been used to extract subsets of the traffic flow samples from the original pcap file as an example. The sample python script for pcap to CSV conversion has been added to the directory, this can be extended for more feature extraction. The network topology diagram is presented below.

HPC and kernel events for EVSE-B

Electric Vehicle Chargers, or EVSE, utilize resource-constrained or embedded computing hardware, such as its main board or SECC, to execute crucial intelligent functions required for charging station operations. Traditional host security solutions, like Anti-Virus software, may not be suitable for these resource-constrained devices. As an alternative, an effective solution harnesses the computing events of the system hardware to establish robust security measures.

Modern processors from manufacturers such as Intel, ARM, and AMD are equipped with Hardware Performance Counters (HPC) that record low-level microarchitecture events. These hardware events play a vital role in establishing baseline behavioural fingerprinting of devices, classifying malware, and applying machine learning techniques for anomaly detection. We utilize PERF to collect approximately 900 kernel and HPC events from the Raspberry Pi (EVSE-B) during the experimental scenarios. The table below presents some HPC and kernel events in this dataset. Refer to the readme file for the complete list of events.

HPC Event Description
instructions Number of instructions executed
cache-misses Number of cache misses
exc taken Exception taken
cpu-migrations CPU Migrations
dTLB-store-misses Data TLB - Write Misses
l1d_cache_wr Level 1 data cache access - Write
L1-icache-loads Level 1 instruction cache access - Read
l2d_cache_rd Level 2 data cache - Read
Mem_access_rd Data memory access - read
Mem_access_wr Data memory access - write

 

Kernel Events Description
kmem kfree Kernel memory freeing event
Net_dev_xmit Network device transmission event
Qdisc_dequeue Dequeue event
Raw_syscalls_sys_enter System call entry (raw) event
Irq_softirq_raise Software interrupt - Raised
Sched_migrate_task Task migration event in the scheduler
Sched_switch Task switch event in the scheduler
Syscalls_sys_enter_close System call entry for close syscall
Syscalls_sys_enter_read System call entry for read syscall
Syscalls_sys_enter_write System call entry for write syscall

The dataset contains some processed and labelled CSV files extracted from the original samples. The original individual CSV files, however, contains all samples captures for each scenario over extended amount of time.

Dataset directorates

The CICEVSE2024 dataset directory contains three subdirectories:

  1. Network Traffic : This contain original pcap files and some extracted csv file for both EVSE-A and EVSE-B
  2. Host Events: This contains the CSV files for Hardware Performance Counter (HPC) and Kernel Events for EVSE-B under both attack and benign conditions.
  3. Power Consumption: This contains the CSV file for power consumption of EVSE-B under both attack and benign conditions.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity (CIC) for its financial and educational support.

Using the dataset

Webinar explanation about CIC IoT datasets: "From Profiling to Protection: Leveraging Datasets for Enhanced IoT Security" by Dr. Sajjad Dadkhah, Assistant Professor and Cybersecurity R&D Team Lead, with Q&A by Sumit Kundu.

YouTube video: Creation of a dataset to advance cybersecurity research in EV Charging Stations by Emmanuel D. Buedi, CIC Cybersecurity Researcher, with Q&A by Sumit Kundu.

Citation

E. D. Buedi, A. A. Ghorbani, S. Dadkhah, and R. Ferreira. “Enhancing EV Charging Station Security Using A Multi-dimensional Dataset : CICEVSE2024”. - (Submitted to ESORICS 2024 Conference).

Download the dataset