B-FERL: Blockchain based Framework for Securing Smart Vehicles

The ubiquity of connecting technologies in smart vehicles and the incremental automation of its functionalities promise significant benefits, including a significant decline in congestion and road fatalities. However, increasing automation and connectedness broadens the attack surface and heightens the likelihood of a malicious entity successfully executing an attack. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain based Framework for sEcuring smaRt vehicLes (B-FERL). B-FERL uses permissioned blockchain technology to tailor information access to restricted entities in the connected vehicle ecosystem. It also uses a challenge-response data exchange between the vehicles and roadside units to monitor the internal state of the vehicle to identify cases of in-vehicle network compromise. In order to enable authentic and valid communication in the vehicular network, only vehicles with a verifiable record in the blockchain can exchange messages. Through qualitative arguments, we show that B-FERL is resilient to identified attacks. Also, quantitative evaluations in an emulated scenario show that B-FERL ensures a suitable response time and required storage size compatible with realistic scenarios. Finally, we demonstrate how B-FERL achieves various important functions relevant to the automotive ecosystem such as trust management, vehicular forensics and secure vehicular networks.