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Felix Kußmaul, Christoph Ruland

• In recent years, several EU countries have started to roll out individual online vehicle registration infrastructures as part of their national e-governance strategy, all of them following similar approaches in general. However, none of these solutions provide proper media continuity, and although having an overall digital character, they fall back to traditional paper communication at some point of the registration process. This affects both citizens and authorities by reducing public sector efficiency. Furthermore, current number plates do not provide sufficient protection against identity theft or tampering and thus require some modifications. In this paper, we present a new approach towards vehicle registration which can be performed completely online, yet keeping a strong focus on security. We introduce an embedded and inseparable vehicle hardware module which carries a cryptographically signed registration certificate that everyone is able to verify. Based on related work, we improve the registration application process by integrating this module from the very beginning so that the resulting licence is physically tied to a particular vehicle. Furthermore, both module and certificate protect against manipulation and vehicle identity theft.