Subject: [ipwave] Root CA for automobiles

From: Alexandre Petrescu <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2020 15:51:49 +0200

Hi, IPWAVErs,

There was some discussion about security for vehicular networks, here in 
the IPWAVE WG.  Security for vehicular networks relies on many things. 
One of the basis is a CA: a Certificate Authority.

I wish I could formulate a few requirements for a CA and PKI for 
vehicular networks like this:

- it should be easy to obtain certificates to use in automobiles.  It
   should be as easy to  obtain a certificate for automobile as it is
   easy to obtain certificates for emails, for servers, for code.
   Ideally, these certificates should be for free, or very low cost.

- a root CA for vehicular networks should be integrated with all the
   other CAs in the Internet, CAs that I can find pre-instaled in a free
   web browser, e.g. firefox.

- people should trust the CAs for vehicular networks.

- I'd add: the root CA for vehicular networks should work fine with
   IPv6, be reachable on IPv6 in the Internet,
   accept IPv6 addresses in its formats,
   use the I-D about TLS, something like
   draft-serhrouchni-tls-certieee1609,
   draft-tls-certieee1609-02.txt,
   draft-msahli-ipwave-extension-ieee1609-03.txt

For information, in Europe there was much work and discussion in recent 
years about dedicated CAs and PKIs for vehicular networks.  Pdf 
documents were issued by expert groups; technical demos were performed. 
A webinar is now proposed by Atos with a JRC (a Joint Research Center of 
EC): "C-ITS EU Root CA Webinar June 18th 1pm – 2pm CEST"
https://ecwacs.webex.com/meet/gmenzel

In France, the company Idnomic proposed such certificates at a point in 
time.

In Netherlands, a company is based, that is named GloablSign, which is a 
CA, which authenticates the "EU Login" which is "one account, many EU 
services".

In my project we used openssl open source software to make and install a 
CA and certify a few self-driving automobiles, RSUs and traffic lights 
controllers through it, on a virtual private network.  It's easy to do. 
What is difficult is to scale it to the size of the Internet and to 
numerous automobiles.

Alex