Federated Blockchain-Based Resilient Identity Management for Securing Consumer Vehicular Networks

Connected vehicles rely heavily on mobile vehicular networks and centralized cloud infrastructures for data handling. These networks contain not only environmental information but also sensitive data such as passenger identities, routes, origins, and destinations, making them prone to various cyber threats. Existing authentication mechanisms are predominantly centralized and cloud-based, which introduces significant vulnerabilities, including high latency, single points of failure, and exposure to denial-of-service attacks, man-in-the-middle intrusions, and data breaches. Moreover, the real-time nature of vehicular data sharing exacerbates these risks. Conventional centralized architectures typically depend on a single trusted authority for vehicle authentication and data integrity validation, which further increases susceptibility to unauthorized access, data tampering, and system disruption. To address these limitations, this work proposes a novel distributed blockchain-based authentication mechanism for Internet of Vehicles and autonomous vehicles. The proposed approach leverages decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials to securely authenticate vehicles within a decentralized network. Extensive experimental evaluations assess the system’s performance across multiple parameters, including latency, trust, and resilience to attacks. Comparative analysis demonstrates a significant improvement in trustworthiness and authenticity, validating the effectiveness of the proposed method.