Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 16, numbers 1 and 2, 2023 // View article


Binding the Battery to the Pass: An Approach to Trustworthy Product Life Cycle Data by Using Certificates Based on PUFs

Authors:
Julian Blümke
Hans-Joachim Hof

Keywords: physical unclonable function; Certificate Transparency; electric vehicle battery; battery identity; battery pass; cybersecurity

Abstract:
Reusing batteries of electric vehicles in second life is one pillar of the European Union’s Green Deal and its derivatives in order to foster the reduction of greenhouse gases. Product life cycle data plays an important role in improving and simplifying the process of finding the most suitable second life application for a used battery. Such data collected throughout the product’s life cycle will be summarized in a digital product pass mandatory for future batteries. Having trustworthy data is a key element of the battery pass in order to provide authentic batteries. This paper presents a concept to securely bind the pass to the battery itself by using physical unclonable functions for creating unique cryptographic keys per battery. Inhomogeneities and cell-to-cell variations in a battery pack enable the use of batteries as physical unclonable functions. The approach combines the cryptographic keys derived from the battery with certificates and makes use of Certificate Transparency promoting trust in the issued certificates. Initial security analysis shows that attacks on product life cycle data and certificates as well as the introduction of manipulated and counterfeit batteries can be detected.

Pages: 44 to 53

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2023. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2023

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636