Self-Sovereign Identities for Software-Defined Vehicles

We address the security and trust challenges for software-defined vehicles, which offer a variety of connected services and features. This includes the vehicle internal network as well as connections to the cloud and other surrounding vehicles or infrastructure. For this purpose, we present example use cases for software-defined vehicles and discuss requirements regarding trust setup. Then, we elaborate these requirements and challenges for different aspects of software-defined vehicles, including identity and trust relationships and traceability. These are then mapped to the capabilities of self-souvereign identities (SSI) and blockchain technology in a systematic way. Based on our analysis, we also present new types of trust relationships for delegation and usage of physical identities. In summary, SSI can be the basis for very many services and security functions, from component traceability to multi-domain trust for complex services.