  Alleviating range anxiety for electric vehicles (i.e., whether such vehicles
can be relied upon to travel long distances in a timely manner) is critical for
sustainable transportation. Extremely fast charging (XFC), whereby electric
vehicles (EV) can be quickly recharged in the time frame it takes to refuel an
internal combustion engine, has been proposed to alleviate this concern. A
critical component of these chargers is the efficient and proper operation of
power converters that convert AC to DC power and otherwise regulate power
delivery to vehicles. These converters rely on the integrity of sensor and
actuation signals. In this work the operation of state-of-the art XFC
converters is assessed in adversarial conditions, specifically against
Intentional Electromagnetic Interference Attacks (IEMI). The targeted system is
analyzed with the goal of determining possible weak points for IEMI, viz.
voltage and current sensor outputs and gate control signals. This work
demonstrates that, with relatively low power levels, an adversary is able to
manipulate the voltage and current sensor outputs necessary to ensure the
proper operation of the converters. Furthermore, in the first attack of its
kind, it is shown that the gate signal that controls the converter switches can
be manipulated, to catastrophic effect; i.e., it is possible for an attacker to
control the switching state of individual transistors to cause irreparable
damage to the converter and associated systems. Finally, a discussion of
countermeasures for hardware designers to mitigate IEMI-based attacks is
provided.
