  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.
