Decentralized Over‐the‐Air Software Updates: A Secure, Scalable and Anonymous Approach for Autonomous Vehicles

As autonomous vehicles rapidly evolve, ensuring the security and scalability of Over‐the‐Air (OTA) software updates is crucial for maintaining vehicle performance and safety. Traditional centralized systems often face challenges, including security issues, limited scalability, and delays in real‐time synchronization. This paper introduces a novel decentralized approach that integrates Merkle Trees, Ring Signatures, and State Channels to address these challenges. Merkle Trees provide a tamper‐evident structure for verifying the integrity of update data, while Ring Signatures authenticate update sources, preserving developer anonymity and preventing unauthorized modifications. State Channels enhance scalability and efficiency by enabling real‐time communication and progress tracking during the update process. We present a detailed technical implementation of the proposed system, including the smart contract architecture and the OTA update procedure. Additionally, we evaluate the performance and efficiency of our approach. This work introduces a secure, scalable, and anonymous method for OTA software updates in autonomous vehicles, setting a new benchmark for future advancements in automotive technology.