Worryingly, the researchers were able to make the chargers switch on or off, remove the owner's access, and show how a hacker could get into a user's home network through the charging units and relevant apps.
Once in someone’s home network, hackers have the ability to steal passwords and set up mock sites which encourage people to submit sensitive information, potentially leading to the theft of money from bank accounts.
Most of the faults have now been fixed but owners are being told to update their apps and chargers, to be safe.
Wallbox and Project EV chargers - both approved for sale in the UK by the Department for Transport - were found to be lacking adequate security when used with an accompanying app for smartphones.
Cyber-security researcher at Pen Test Partners, Vangelis Stykas, discovered the vulnerabilities and told the BBC; "On Wallbox you could take full control of the charger, you could gain full access and remove the usual owner's access on the charger. You could stop them from charging their own vehicles, and provide free charging to an attacker's vehicle.
"Project EV had a really bad implementation on their back end. Their authentication where it existed was pretty primitive, so an attacker could easily escalate themselves to being an administrator and change the firmware of all the chargers."
"It's pretty obvious for anyone who can understand cloud systems and cloud communication, and it didn't take that much to spot the vulnerability and find a way to exploit it."
