Blockchain-Based Firmware Security Check and Recovery for Battery Management Systems

Abstract

Blockchain technology has many beneficial properties that can advance electric vehicles in cyber-physical environments, especially for security-related purposes for EV battery management systems (BMSs). This paper explores firmware security vulnerabilities of a current BMS through reverse engineering and how the blockchain technology can be applied toward a next-generation BMS by managing critical activities and tasks including BMS firmware security check, recovery, and patch generation. A breakthrough method for blockchain-based automated detection of the firmware vulnerabilities and a patch generation is implemented in Internet-of-Thing (IoT) security modules as nodes of a blockchain network and validated by experiments. The proposed methods transformative to other cyber-physical system applications.