# Hydro-Québec EV charger backend flaws disclosed

Published: 2026-07-07 · Severity: medium · Sectors: transportation
Canonical: https://vorant.io/reports/2f5893a8-28fe-5962-af27-78a0b74311e7/hydro-qu-bec-ev-charger-backend-flaws-disclosed

> CISA warns of three vulnerabilities in Hydro-Québec's Le Circuit Electrique EV charging station backend that could allow privilege escalation or denial-of-service.

CISA published an ICS advisory detailing three vulnerabilities in Hydro-Québec's Le Circuit Electrique EV charging station backend, used in Canada's public charging network. The flaws stem from improper access control on the OCPP websocket endpoint (CVE-2026-20744), lack of authentication attempt throttling (CVE-2026-42952), and insufficient session expiration allowing multiple connections with the same charging station ID (CVE-2026-44383). Together these could permit an attacker to escalate privileges or launch denial-of-service attacks against charging infrastructure by deploying malicious OCPP clients.

Hydro-Québec has mitigated the issues by disabling OCPP on most charging stations and implementing authentication for stations still reliant on the protocol. The vulnerabilities were reported by an anonymous researcher, and CISA states there is no known public exploitation at this time. The advisory falls under the Transportation Systems critical infrastructure sector, reflecting the growing exposure of EV charging networks to remote network-based attacks.

## Mentioned in this report

- Vulnerabilities: CVE-2026-20744, CVE-2026-42952, CVE-2026-44383

## Detection guidance (public sample)

### Repeated Authentication Failures Against OCPP WebSocket Endpoint

ATT&CK: T1110

Detects a pattern of repeated failed authentication responses to an OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol) websocket endpoint from the same source, indicating a lack of throttling being abused for credential guessing or session/token brute-forcing against EV charging backend infrastructure. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.

```yaml
title: Repeated Authentication Failures Against OCPP WebSocket Endpoint
logsource:
  category: proxy
  product: windows
detection:
  selection:
    c-uri|contains:
    - /ocpp
    - /OCPP
  filter_status:
    sc-status:
    - 401
    - 403
  condition: selection and filter_status
fields:
- src_ip
- c-uri
- sc-status
- cs-username
falsepositives:
- Legitimate charging stations reconnecting after firmware updates or network drops
- Misconfigured charge point clients retrying with stale credentials
level: medium
description: "Note: this rule flags individual failed auth events to the OCPP endpoint;\
  \ a genuine brute-force / lack-of-throttling condition is confirmed when many such\
  \ events occur from the same source_ip within a short window (e.g. >10 in 5 minutes)\
  \ \u2014 apply this threshold in the SIEM correlation layer, not in the Sigma condition."
id: be3bba36-3e26-53da-8ab2-86f3d22ab8b8
status: experimental
author: Vorant
```

### Multiple Concurrent Connections With Same OCPP Charge Point ID

ATT&CK: T1499

Detects distinct websocket connection establishment events referencing the same OCPP charge point/station identifier from differing source addresses, consistent with abuse of insufficient session expiration to run parallel or hijacked sessions against a single charger. Auto-generated starting point — validate and tune in your environment before deploying. IOC matches can false-positive on shared infrastructure and decay as adversary infrastructure rotates.

```yaml
title: Multiple Concurrent Connections With Same OCPP Charge Point ID
logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: windows
detection:
  selection:
    DestinationPort:
    - 80
    - 443
    - 8080
    - 8443
  ocpp_path:
    DestinationPortPath|contains:
    - /ocpp/
  condition: selection and ocpp_path
fields:
- SourceIp
- DestinationIp
- DestinationPortPath
falsepositives:
- Load-balanced or clustered OCPP backend infrastructure legitimately proxying the
  same station ID across multiple backend nodes
- Charge point reconnect/failover behavior during network instability
level: medium
description: This rule identifies raw connection attempts to OCPP paths; correlate
  at the SIEM layer for multiple simultaneous open sessions sharing an identical charge-point-id
  parameter from different source IPs within an overlapping time window to confirm
  session-expiration abuse (CVE-2026-44383).
tags:
- attack.t1499
id: d86b0fa9-c424-5e6a-8a12-5bc7848eaf11
status: experimental
author: Vorant
```

Behavioural rules are generated from public reporting — validate in your environment before deploying.

Source reporting: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-26-188-01

---

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