Presentation on DLT and Block Chains use in intelligent transport systems presentation

By Dr Haitham Cruickshank
PETRAS Research Associate

Dr Haitham Cruickshank, Reader at the University of Surrey, recently gave a presentation on ‘DLT and Block Chains use in Intelligent transport systems (ITS)’ at the ETSI Security Week, 11-15 June, in France.

One of the major themes during the ETSI Security week was “Security and Trust in ICT: the Value of Distributed Ledger Technology”.  Haitham gave a presentation in a panel session called “Improving Security and Privacy of DLT”, where the panel discussed whether Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) are a solution for the security and trust in ICT, the security/privacy issues within DLT (e.g. quantum-safe, privacy…) and how to overcome them. The panel members included:

• Haitham S. Cruickshank, University of Surrey
• Duncan Jones, Thales
• Volkmar Lotz, SAP
• Svetla Nikova, KU Leuven
• Nicolas Thomas, Fortinet

Dr Cruickshank’s presentation focused on the lessons learnt from applying Block chains for key management in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Here are the highlights of the presentation:

• Block chains are not suitable for IT safety messages such as CAM and DENM
• Blockchain-Based Dynamic Key Management is possible for Heterogeneous (security wise) ITS Systems, where it takes advantage of the decentralised block chains structure to simplify the key management in heterogeneous ITS domains.
• Block Chains can prevent insider attacks due to the traceability of events history and predicted movements in ITS
• Block Chain has a limitation in that it is not suitable for large numbers of transactions (as shown in the graph below, left hand side with the red and green lines intersection)