Implementation of a Secure Internet Voting Protocol

Voting is one of the most important activities in a democratic society. In a traditional voting environment voting process sometimes becomes quite inconvenient due to the reluctance of certain voters to visit a polling booth to cast votes besides involving huge social and human resources. The development of computer networks and elaboration of cryptographic techniques facilitate the implementation of electronic voting. In this work we propose a secure electronic voting protocol that is suitable for large scale voting over the Internet. The protocol allows a voter to cast his or her ballot anonymously, by exchanging untraceable yet authentic messages. The e-voting protocol is based on blind signatures and has the properties of anonymity, mobility, efficiency, robustness, authentication, uniqueness, and universal verifiability and coercion-resistant. The proposed protocol encompasses three distinct phases - that of registration phase, voting phase and counting phase involving five parties, the voter, certification centre, authentication server, voting server and a tallying server

New approaches for electronic voting paradigms

La democràcia es el sistema de govern més utilitzat al món. No obstant, en un món cada vegada més globalitzat, la idea de mobilitzar la gent per votar en un col·legi electoral gestionat per persones resulta antiquada tot i ser la implementació més comú en l'actualitat. Millorar aquesta situació mitjançant l'ús de les tecnologies de la informació sembla una evolució òbvia i molt demanada però, malgrat l'existència d'algunes implementacions en entorns reals, encara no ha estat utilitzada excepte en comptades ocasions. Obrir la porta d'unes eleccions a les tecnologies de la informació implica l'obertura dels protocols de votació a un nou conjunt d'atacs contra aquests. Tenint en compte els requisits d'una elecció: privacitat del votant i integritat de l'elecció, les solucions actuals passen per implementar l'elecció seguint un dels tres paradigmes de vot segurs: barreja de vots, recompte homomòrfic o signatura cega. En aquesta tesi, es proposen nous protocols per als diferents paradigmes. La primera proposta consisteix en un sistema de vot que, basant-se en una informació redundant enviada pel votant, és capaç de realitzar una barreja de vots amb cost negligible incrementant lleugerament el cost del recompte. Per al paradigma de recompte homomòrfic, es proposa una prova de validesa del vot basada en les proves utilitzades per demostrar la correctesa en sistemes amb barreja de vots. Aquesta solució permet utilitzar les millores realitzades sobre el paradigma de barreja de vots per al seu ús en el paradigma de recompte homomòrfic. Finalment, es plantegen dues solucions per a eleccions del paradigma de signatura cega. La primera utilitza credencials generades amb signatura cega per permetre als votants vàlids enviar el seu vot sense que es conegui la seva identitat. La segona resol el problema del vot doble en aquest paradigma mitjan cant una construcció que utilitza un sistema de moneda electrònica off-line.La democracia es el sistema de gobierno más usado en el mundo. No obstante, en un mundo cada vez más globalizado, la idea de movilizar a la gente para votar en un colegio electoral gestionado por personas resulta anticuada a pesar de ser la implementación más común en la actualidad. Mejorar esta situación mediante el uso de las tecnologías de la información parece una evolución obvia y muy solicitada pero, a pesar de unas pocas adaptaciones, aún no ha sido usada salvo en escasas ocasiones. Abrir la puerta de unas elecciones a las tecnologías de la información lleva implícita la apertura de los protocolos de voto a un nuevo conjunto de ataques contra estos. Teniendo en cuenta los requisitos de una elección: privacidad del votante e integridad de la elección, las soluciones actuales pasan por implementar la elección siguiendo uno de los tres paradigmas de voto seguros: mezcla de votos, recuento homomórfico o firma ciega. En esta tesis, se proponen nuevos protocolos para los distintos paradigmas. La primera propuesta consiste en un sistema de voto bajo el paradigma de mezcla de votos que, basándose en una información redundante enviada por el votante, es capaz de realizar una mezcla de votos con un coste negligible incrementando ligeramente el coste del recuento. Para el paradigma de recuento homomórfico, se propone una prueba para verificar que el voto es válido basada en las pruebas de correctitud en sistemas con mezcla de votos. Esta solución permite usar las mejoras realizadas en el paradigma de mezcla de votos para su uso en el paradigma de recuento homomórfico. Finalmente, se proponen dos nuevos protocolos del paradigma de firma ciega. El primero utiliza credenciales generadas con firma ciega para permitir a votantes válidos enviar su voto sin que se conozca su identidad. El segundo resuelve el problema del voto doble en el paradigma de firma ciega mediante una construcción que utiliza un sistema de moneda electrónica off-line.Democracy is the most established government system in the world. However, in an increasingly globalized world, the idea of requiring people to move in order to cast their vote in the polling station seems outdated, even though it is, nowadays, the most common implementation. An obvious and widely demanded evolution is to improve the election framework by enabling the use of information technologies. Nevertheless, this solution has been implemented few times in real environment elections and the global success of these solutions have been called into question. The use of information technologies in voting protocols improves the quality of the election but, at the same time, it also opens up the voting protocols to new threats. Keeping this attacks in mind and given the election requirements: voter's privacy and election's integrity, the solutions proposed up to date are to implement one of the three secure voting paradigms: mixtype based, homomorphic tally, and blind signature. In this thesis, we present new protocols for the di erent paradigms. Our rst proposal, based on the mix-type paradigm, consists in a voting protocol which is able to perform the ballot mix with negligible cost but slightly increasing the tally cost. The proposed protocol makes use of a proper vote generation based on sending secret redundant information with the ballot when it is cast. For the homomorphic tally paradigm, we propose a zero knowledge proof of correctness of the ballot based on the proofs used to demonstrate the correctness of a shu e in the mix-type paradigm. This protocol makes possible to use the improvements on the shu e correctness proofs in the homomorphic tally paradigm. Finally, two di erent protocols are also proposed for the blind signature paradigm. The rst one uses credentials generated by means of a blind signature which allow eligible voters to cast their vote without leaking information about their identity. The second one is focused on solving the double voting problem in this paradigm. The protocol proposed uses o -line e-coin systems to provide anonymity disclosure in case of double voting

EFFICIENT AND SCALABLE NETWORK SECURITY PROTOCOLS BASED ON LFSR SEQUENCES

The gap between abstract, mathematics-oriented research in cryptography and the engineering approach of designing practical, network security protocols is widening. Network researchers experiment with well-known cryptographic protocols suitable for different network models. On the other hand, researchers inclined toward theory often design cryptographic schemes without considering the practical network constraints. The goal of this dissertation is to address problems in these two challenging areas: building bridges between practical network security protocols and theoretical cryptography. This dissertation presents techniques for building performance sensitive security protocols, using primitives from linear feedback register sequences (LFSR) sequences, for a variety of challenging networking applications. The significant contributions of this thesis are: 1. A common problem faced by large-scale multicast applications, like real-time news feeds, is collecting authenticated feedback from the intended recipients. We design an efficient, scalable, and fault-tolerant technique for combining multiple signed acknowledgments into a single compact one and observe that most signatures (based on the discrete logarithm problem) used in previous protocols do not result in a scalable solution to the problem. 2. We propose a technique to authenticate on-demand source routing protocols in resource-constrained wireless mobile ad-hoc networks. We develop a single-round multisignature that requires no prior cooperation among nodes to construct the multisignature and supports authentication of cached routes. 3. We propose an efficient and scalable aggregate signature, tailored for applications like building efficient certificate chains, authenticating distributed and adaptive content management systems and securing path-vector routing protocols. 4. We observe that blind signatures could form critical building blocks of privacypreserving accountability systems, where an authority needs to vouch for the legitimacy of a message but the ownership of the message should be kept secret from the authority. We propose an efficient blind signature that can serve as a protocol building block for performance sensitive, accountability systems. All special forms digital signatures—aggregate, multi-, and blind signatures—proposed in this dissertation are the first to be constructed using LFSR sequences. Our detailed cost analysis shows that for a desired level of security, the proposed signatures outperformed existing protocols in computation cost, number of communication rounds and storage overhead