Establishing trust by a community of vehicles

A system for authenticating vehicles based on trust established within a community of vehicles using a distributed ledger, comprising:

• a storage medium storing a local ledger which is a copy of a distributed ledger associating an identifier of each of a plurality of vehicles with a respective unique public key;
• and
• at least one processor of a trusted party coupled to the storage medium, the at least one processor executes a code, the code comprising:
• code instructions to receive from at least one vehicle of the plurality of vehicles, via at least one communication channel, an authentication request to authenticate at least one another vehicle, the authentication request comprising an identifier of at least one another vehicle and a message signed using a private key of the at least one another vehicle, the message is decodable using a public key derived from the private key;
• code instructions to verify the identifier is genuinely associated with the public key of the at least one another vehicle by decoding the message using the public key retrieved from the local ledger;
• and
• code instructions to transmit to the at least one vehicle a response indicative of a verification success or failure;
• and
• wherein the at least one vehicle establishes a communication session with the at least one another vehicle in case of successful verification;
• wherein the trusted party which comprises a trusted vehicle and/or a trusted service system is characterized by being trusted by the at least one vehicle based on at least one past communications session between the at least one vehicle and the trusted party.

A computer program product for authenticating vehicles based on trust established within a community of vehicles using a distributed ledger, comprising a non-transitory medium storing thereon computer program instructions which, when executed by at least one hardware processor of a trusted party, cause the at least one hardware processor to:

• receive from at least one vehicle of a plurality of vehicles, via at least one communication channel an authentication request comprising an identifier of at least one another vehicle and a message signed using a private key of the at least one another vehicle, the message is decodable using a public key derived from the private key;
• verify the identifier is genuinely associated with the public key of the at least one another vehicle by decoding the message using the public key retrieved from a local ledger stored by the trusted party, the local ledger is a copy of a distributed ledger associating an identifier of each of the plurality of vehicles with a respective unique public key;
• and
• transmit to the at least one vehicle a response indicative of a verification success or failure;
• wherein the at least one vehicle establishes a communication session with the at least one another vehicle in case of successful verification;
• wherein the trusted party which comprises a trusted vehicle and/or a trusted service system is characterized by being trusted by the at least one vehicle based on at least one past communications session between the at least one vehicle and the trusted party.