A generic public key infrastructure for securing Car-to-X communication
Bißmeyer, Norbert, Stübing, Hagen, Schoch, Elmar, Götz, Stefan, Stotz, Jan Peter, Lonc, Brigitte
Abstract
Security and privacy in Car-to-X (C2X) communication is a major aspect that affects all applications used in the network. Due to the wireless communication and the decentralized character of the ad-hoc network attacks are inevitable and are hardly detectable by central entities. Especially, safety critical applications which trigger their actions based on data received from other network entities are relying on the trustworthiness of the exchanged messages. To achieve this trust in messages, the worldwide commonly followed approach is to introduce a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). The PKI issues certificates to C2X enabled units and therefore assures their validity. Yet, C2X has several special requirements on the design of a suitable PKI, like minimum overhead and privacy preservation. This paper presents a PKI organisation and structure, which was created in the context of the Car 2 Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC), the European industry forum on C2X communication technologies. In the design of our proposed PKI, great importance is attached laid on interoperability with other PKIs (e.g. in the U.S.) and extensibility for future additional implementations. Processes are defined for message verification, certificate updates and entity revocation. Likewise, flexible privacy protection measures and anonymity aspects in the ad-hoc communication as well as in the PKI backend are also a major topic.