Beyond Liability: Decentralized Forensics for Autonomous Vehicle Events via a Redactable Blockchain Approach
Abstract
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) can sense their environment and navigate without human input. However, when AVs are involved in accidents with other AVs or human subjects, liability must be indisputably determined based on accident forensics. However, existing methods rely on centralized authorities to collect and manage accident data, making them vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks (e.g., tampering, denial-of-service). Decentralized systems, such as blockchain networks, present a promising alternative; however, their data immutability properties present challenges in practice. Consequently, this paper introduces a redactable blockchain solution for vehicular event forensics. This novel approach, underpinned by a decentralized attribute-based chameleon hash function, supports modifying data from multiple blocks, as well as individual transaction-level modification operations, without the issue of a single point of failure. We implemented the proposed system using the Charm cryptography library and the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform. The Chameleon hash function can support redactable operations for on-chain vehicular event records with a latency of seconds. We also conducted extensive experiments on blockchain performance and the witness group formation cost, highlighting that the proposed redactable blockchain is efficient in practice for vehicular event forensics tasks.
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Nainar, M., Sankaranarayanan, S., & Veeramani, K. (2026) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-026-54102-1
“(23) – (29) through the use of smart contracts.”
- Authors
- Guo, H., Li, W., Meese, C., Wang, Y., & Nejad, M.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern Polytechnical University (CN)
- Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (CN)
- University of Delaware (US)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
- Published
- 2025-12
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 5390-5403
- ISSN
- 1932-4537 (ISSN-L)
- 2373-7379
- OpenAlex
- W4414955877
- Cited by
- 0
- References
- 35
- FWCI
- 0.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (2025JC-YBMS-688)
- Key R&D Programs of Taicang, 2024 (TC2024SF10)
- XJTLU Research Development Fund (RDF-22-02-106)
- Jiangsu Province Science and Technology Youth Talent Promotion Program (JSTJ-2025-144)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology in Education and Learning
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs)
- Keywords
- autonomous vehicles, redactable blockchain, chameleon hash, attribute-based cryptography, decentralized data management, liability determination, Hyperledger Fabric, blockchain performance, tamper resistance
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