Context: Currently there is an urgent need for a sustainable digital route to zero-carbon road transport by facilitating low-carbon charging of electric vehicles (EVs) to meet the 2030 target to ban all new petrol and diesel cars, and 2050 Net-Zero. The UK government has announced £80 million ($99.7m) of investment to develop the next generation of EVs. Cyber threats and attacks targeted on critical infrastructure such as EV, can hamper the critical operations and ongoing services. The advanced cyber-attacks can also lead to cascading effect and propagating to other components of the system, which can further create disruption to the system. Therefore, it is needed to identify associated cyber risks, and estimate and quantify them to understand their potential impact and adverse behaviour on EV infrastructure in order to recognise their adverse behaviour.
The School of Computer Science & Informatics has a strong emphasis on cyber security research due to recent grants, and also hosts the Airbus Centre of Excellence for Cyber Security and NCSC approved Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR). Students attend research workshops and conferences, skills training through the Doctoral Academy, and have an opportunity to work with industry. A healthy research environment promotes research ideas and collaborations, and opportunities for networking through interdisciplinary work with the School of Engineering (Energy/EV research group). The students will be part of the Sustainable Transport Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Hub (https://idth-sustainable-transport.org/) benefiting from training and activities, and can also interact with DTE Network+ (https://dte.network/).
Objectives: The objectives of this work are: (1) Analysing advanced cyber threats and attacks on EV infrastructure; (2) Developing propagation model using to understand and describe how cyber-attacks are propagated in EV eco-system using simulation approach; and (3) Developing a stochastic method to estimate and quantify cyber risks associated with the EV infrastructure.
Indicative Deliverables:
- Surveys on risk, impact and state of the art: cyber risks for EV infrastructure;
- Identifying potential cyber threats, ways of attacks and risks to EV infrastructure, threat modelling;
- Develop -- propagation models and methods to estimate and quantify cyber risks;
- Academic technical publications
Team:
Dr Neetesh Saxena
Prof Liana Cipcigan
Prof Omer Rana
Academic Criteria:
A 2:1 or above Honours undergraduate degree or a master’s degree, in computing or a related subject. Applicants for whom English is not their first language must demonstrate their proficiency by obtaining an IELTS score of at least 6.5 overall, with a minimum of 6.0 in each skills component.
How to apply: This project is accepting applications all year round, for self-funded candidates via https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/programme/computer-science-and-informatics
In order to be considered candidates must submit the following information:
- Supporting statement
- CV
- In the ‘Research Proposal’ section of the application enter the name of the project you are applying to.
- Qualification certificates and Transcripts
- Proof of Funding. For example, a letter of intent from your sponsor or confirmation of self-funded status (In the funding field of your application, insert Self-Funded)
- References x 2
- Proof of English language (if applicable)
Please contact Dr. Neetesh Saxena to discuss this project.
If you have any questions or need more information, please contact COMSC-PGR@cardiff.ac.uk
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