Combined Charging System FirmwareOperating system · Combined Charging System Project

CVE-2022-0878

MEDIUM · 6.5 CVSS v3.1 Published 2022-04-12
Fix available
A fix is available. Upgrade to after 2.0 or later.
See remediation →
70/100
Remediation priority · Elevated
Public exploit No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Electric Vehicle (EV) commonly utilises the Combined Charging System (CCS) for DC rapid charging. To exchange important messages such as the State of Charge (SoC) with the Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) CCS uses a high-bandwidth IP link provided by the HomePlug Green PHY (HPGP) power-line communication (PLC) technology. The attack interrupts necessary control communication between the vehicle and charger, causing charging sessions to abort. The attack can be conducted wirelessly from a distance using electromagnetic interference, allowing individual vehicles or entire fleets to be disrupted simultaneously. In addition, the attack can be mounted with off-the-shelf radio hardware and minimal technical knowledge. With a power budget of 1 W, the attack is successful from around 47 m distance. The exploited behavior is a required part of the HomePlug Green PHY, DIN 70121 & ISO 15118 standards and all known implementations exhibit it. In addition to electric cars, Brokenwire affects electric ships, airplanes and heavy duty vehicles utilising these standards.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-306

A sensitive function is reachable with no authentication at all, so anyone who finds the endpoint can use it. These are routinely discovered by automated scanning. The fix is to require and enforce authentication on every privileged path, with no exceptions left open.

General guidance for the missing authentication class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Combined Charging System FirmwareOperating system
Affected:<= 2.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Adjacent
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Upgrade available Upgrade to a release after 2.0
Recommended fix High confidence
  1. Assess physical exposure of charging infrastructure to wireless interference (e.g., proximity to roads, parking areas, or public spaces)
  2. Consider deploying electromagnetic shielding or Faraday cage enclosures around vulnerable charging equipment where feasible
  3. Implement RF monitoring systems to detect unusual electromagnetic interference patterns targeting charging stations
  4. For fleet operations, develop charging schedules and location strategies that reduce collective exposure to potential attack vectors
  5. Engage with charging infrastructure vendors and standards bodies (ISO 15118, HomePlug) to track emerging mitigation technologies or standard revisions
  6. Review insurance and risk management policies to account for this vulnerability in operational risk assessments
  7. Document this as a known architectural limitation of the CCS/HPGP standards rather than a patchable software flaw
Caveat No software upgrade can remediate this vulnerability; it is inherent to the HomePlug Green PHY, DIN 70121, and ISO 15118 standards themselves

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

We can identify the exact fixed release, upgrade, and verify it in staging — typical engagement from $1,600. Get the upgrade done

Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2022-0878 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2022-0878 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

Be the first to add a field note for this CVE — a mitigation you’ve verified, a version caveat, or a link to a working fix. Sign in above to contribute.

What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data