METHOD OF SECURING AND AUTHENTICATING DATA USING MICRO-CERTIFICATES

• US 20100202616A1
• Filed: 02/12/2009
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/12/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Motors LLC (General Motors Company)
• Original Assignee: General Motors Corporation (Motors Liquidation Co. GUC Trust)
• Inventors: Madhavan, Sethu K., Peirce, Kenneth L., Piwowarski, James J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,582,775 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 380/277
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/062 for key distribution, e.g. centrally by trusted party cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for key distribution involving a central third party H04L9/0819
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0823 using certificates cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication involving certificates H04L9/3263
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/033 of the user plane, e.g. user's traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/04 Key management, e.g. using generic bootstrapping architecture [GBA]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/024 Guidance services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/44 for communication between vehicles and infrastructures, e.g. vehicle-to-cloud [V2C] or vehicle-to-home [V2H]

Abstract

A method of securing wireless communications includes storing a recipient'"'"'s micro-certificate at a vehicle, a call center, or a certificate authority, transmitting the micro-certificate from its place of storage, extracting the public key from the micro-certificate, encrypting the vehicle communication using the public key, transmitting the encrypted vehicle communication to the recipient, and decrypting the vehicle communication using a private key after receiving the vehicle communication. The micro-certificate can include identifying data for the recipient and can have a length that is less than twice the length of the public key contained in the micro-certificate.

Claims

1. A method of securing wireless communications, the method comprising:

(a) storing a recipient'"'"'s micro-certificate at a vehicle, a call center, or a certificate authority;

(b) transmitting the micro-certificate from its place of storage, wherein the micro-certificate includes a public key having a length that is more than half the length of the micro-certificate;

(c) extracting the public key from the micro-certificate;

(d) encrypting a vehicle communication using the public key;

(e) transmitting the encrypted vehicle communication to the recipient; and

(f) decrypting the vehicle communication using a private key after receiving the vehicle communication.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein step (e) comprises transmitting the vehicle communication over a cellular voice channel.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the length of the public key is greater than three-fourths of the length of the micro-certificate.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the micro-certificate further comprises identification data that uniquely identifies the recipient.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the micro-certificate comprises no more than 44 bytes.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the micro-certificate comprises an elliptical-curve implicit certificate.

7. A method of securing wireless communications, the method comprising:

(a) storing a private key at a vehicle;

(b) requesting a micro-certificate at a vehicle telematics unit, wherein the micro-certificate includes a public key belonging to a recipient and an identifying data string;

(c) receiving the micro-certificate at the vehicle;

(d) extracting the public key belonging to the recipient from the micro-certificate;

(e) generating a first encryption of a vehicle communication, wherein the communication is encrypted using the extracted public key belonging to the recipient;

(f) performing a second encryption on the generated first encrypted vehicle communication using the private key stored at the vehicle; and

(g) transmitting the results of the second encryption between a vehicle and the recipient.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising the steps of:

storing a private key belonging to the recipient at the recipient;

requesting a second micro-certificate from a certifying agency or the vehicle that comprises a public key belonging to the vehicle;

performing a first decryption using the public key belonging to the vehicle to decrypt the results obtained from the second encryption; and

performing a second decryption using the private key belonging to the recipient.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the vehicle communication includes communications over the voice channel.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the vehicle communication includes short message service (SMS) messages or voice communications.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the identifying data string includes a station identification number that identifies a particular vehicle.

12. The method of claim 7, wherein the micro-certificate comprises no more than 44 bytes.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein the public key has a length that is greater than three-fourths of the length of the micro-certificate.

14. A method of securing wireless communications, the method comprising:

(a) storing a private key at a call center;

(b) requesting a micro-certificate at a call center, wherein the micro-certificate includes a public key belonging to a vehicle;

(c) receiving the micro-certificate at the call center;

(d) extracting the public key belonging to the vehicle from the micro-certificate;

(e) performing a first encryption of a vehicle communication at the call center using the public key belonging to the vehicle;

(f) using the results of the first encryption to perform a second encryption at the call center using the private key stored at the call center; and

(g) after the second encryption, sending the vehicle communication to the vehicle.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising the steps of:

storing a private key belonging to the vehicle at the vehicle;

requesting a second micro-certificate from a certifying agency or the call center that comprises a public key belonging to the call center;

performing a first decryption using the public key belonging to the call center to decrypt the results obtained from the second encryption; and

performing a second decryption using the private key belonging to the vehicle.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the vehicle communication comprises communications over the voice channel.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the public key has a length that is more than half the length of the micro-certificate.

18. The method of claim 14, wherein the length of the public key is greater than three-fourths of the length of the micro-certificate.

19. The method of claim 14, wherein the micro-certificate comprises no more than 44 bytes.

20. The method of claim 14, wherein the micro-certificate further comprises certificate expiration data and identification data that uniquely identifies the recipient.