BLAME: A Blockchain-assisted Misbehavior Detection and Event Validation in VANETs

The vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are considered a key mechanism for the collection and dissemination of basic safety messages (BSM) in the modern transportation system. However, the presence of compromised or malicious vehicles within the network can disrupt the security of the information and the safety of the passengers. The emergence of a blockchain-based distributed framework in VANETs ensures transparency and security within the network without the assist of a trusted centralized entity. Nonetheless, the presence of the majority of malicious vehicles within the region of interest (ROI) can still bypass the security provided by the state-of-the-art blockchain-based frameworks. In this paper, we propose a Blockchain-assisted Misbehavior Detection and Event Validation (BLAME) framework that can effectively detect the valid traffic events and the malicious vehicles from the ROI by leveraging the neighbor information and the event recorded by the individual vehicles even if they are in majority. The efficacy of BLAME has been validated through simulations in VENTOS simulators and a simulated blockchain environment by extensively addressing different use case scenarios.