Enhancing and Implementing Fully Transparent Internet Voting

Voting over the internet has been the focus of significant research with the potential to solve many problems. Current implementations typically suffer from a lack of transparency, where the connection between vote casting and result tallying is seen as a black box by voters. A new protocol was recently proposed that allows full transparency, never obfuscating any step of the process, and splits authority between mutually-constraining conflicting parties. Achieving such transparency brings with it challenging issues. In this paper we propose an efficient algorithm for generating unique, anonymous identifiers (voting locations) that is based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem, we extend the functionality of an election to allow for races with multiple winners, and we introduce a prototype of this voting system implemented as a multiplatform web application

Temporal Coverage Based Content Distribution in Heterogeneous Smart Device Networks

The present work studies content distribution in heterogeneous smart device networks, in which all smartphones/ tablets can communicate through proximity channels such as Bluetooth/NFC/Wi-Fi Direct when they are in proximity, but only some devices have the cellular data communication capability. In the context of recent applications of content distribution in smart device networks such as mobile offloading and enterprise network defense prioritization, we propose a temporal coverage based scheme that exploits nodes' encounter regularity and content's delivery delay tolerance to reduce content delivery costs. Using kernel-density estimation (KDE) on the readily available proximity encounter records, we propose a network structural property, T-covering set, and a corresponding localized algorithm that distributedly elects a T-covering set from the underlying network. Using real Bluetooth encounter traces, we demonstrate that temporal coverage based content distribution using T-covering set can significantly reduce content delivery cost with minimal delay and no sacrifice in coverage

The Internet Based Electronic Voting Enabling Open and Fair Election

Voting is the pillar of modern democracies. However, examination of current voting systems (including E-voting techniques) shows a gap between casting secret ballots and tallying and verifying individual votes. This gap is caused by either disconnection between the vote-casting process and the vote-tallying process, or opaque transition (e.g. due to encryption) from vote- casting to vote-tallying and thus, damages voter assurance, i.e. failing to answer the question: “Will your vote count?” We proposed a groundbreaking E-voting protocol that fills this gap and provides a fully transparent election. In this new voting system, this transition is seamless, viewable, and verifiable. As a result, the above question can be answered assuredly: “Yes, my vote counts!” The new E-voting protocol is fundamentally different from all existing voting/E-voting protocols in terms of both concepts and the underlying mechanisms. It consists of three innovative Technical Designs: TD1: universal verifiable voting vector; TD2: forward and backward mutual lock voting; and TD3: in-process verification and enforcement. The new technique is the first fully transparent E-voting protocol which fills the aforementioned gap. The trust is split equally among all tallying authorities who are of conflict-of-interest and will technologically restrain from each other. As a result, the new technique enables open and fair elections, even for minor or weak political parties. It is able to mitigate errors and risk and detect fraud and attacks including collusion, with convincingly high probability 1 − 2−(m−log(m))n (n: #voters and m ≥ 2:#candidates). It removes many existing requirements such as trusted central tallying authorities, tailored hardware or software, and complex cryptographic primitives. In summary, the new e- voting technique delivers voter assurance and can transform the present voting booth based voting and election practice. Besides voting and elections, the new technique can also be adapted to other applications such as student class evaluation, rating and reputation systems

New threats to health data privacy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Along with the rapid digitalization of health data (e.g. Electronic Health Records), there is an increasing concern on maintaining data privacy while garnering the benefits, especially when the data are required to be published for secondary use. Most of the current research on protecting health data privacy is centered around data de-identification and data anonymization, which removes the identifiable information from the published health data to prevent an adversary from reasoning about the privacy of the patients. However, published health data is not the only source that the adversaries can count on: with a large amount of information that people voluntarily share on the Web, sophisticated attacks that join disparate information pieces from multiple sources against health data privacy become practical. Limited efforts have been devoted to studying these attacks yet.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We study how patient privacy could be compromised with the help of today’s information technologies. In particular, we show that private healthcare information could be collected by aggregating and associating disparate pieces of information from multiple online data sources including online social networks, public records and search engine results. We demonstrate a real-world case study to show user identity and privacy are highly vulnerable to the attribution, inference and aggregation attacks. We also show that people are highly identifiable to adversaries even with inaccurate information pieces about the target, with real data analysis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We claim that too much information has been made available electronic and available online that people are very vulnerable without effective privacy protection.</p

Revocable, Interoperable and User-Centric (Active) Authentication Across Cyberspace

This work addresses fundamental and challenging user authentication and universal identity issues and solves the problems of system usability, authentication data security, user privacy, irrevocability, interoperability, cross-matching attacks, and post-login authentication breaches associated with existing authentication systems. It developed a solid user-centric biometrics based authentication model, called Bio-Capsule (BC), and implemented an (active) authentication system. BC is the template derived from the (secure) fusion of a user’s biometrics and that of a Reference Subject (RS). RS is simply a physical object such as a doll or an artificial one, such as an image. It is users’ BCs, rather than original biometric templates, that are utilized for user authentication and identification. The implemented (active) authentication system will facilitate and safely protect individuals’ diffused cyber activities, which is particularly important nowadays, when people are immersed in cyberspace. User authentication is the first guard of any trustworthy computing system. Along with people’s immersion in the penetrated cyber space integrated with information, networked systems, applications and mobility, universal identity security& management and active authentication become of paramount importance for cyber security and user privacy. Each of three typical existing authentication methods, what you KNOW (Password/PIN), HAVE (SmartCard), and ARE (Fingerprint/Face/Iris) and their combinations, suffer from their own inherent problems. For example, biometrics is becoming a promising authentication/identification method because it binds an individual with his identity, is resistant to losses, and does not need to memorize/carry. However, biometrics introduces its own challenges. One serious problem with biometrics is that biometric templates are hard to be replaced once compromised. In addition, biometrics may disclose user’s sensitive information (such as race, gender, even health condition), thus creating user privacy concerns. In the recent years, there has been intensive research addressing biometric template security and replaceability, such as cancelable biometrics and Biometric Cryptosystems. Unfortunately, these approaches do not fully exploit biometric advantages (e.g., requiring a PIN), reduce authentication accuracy, and/or suffer from possible attacks. The proposed approach is the first elegant solution to effectively address irreplaceability, privacy-preserving, and interoperability of both login and after-login authentication. Our methodology preserves biometrics’ robustness and accuracy, without sacrificing system acceptability for the same user, and distinguishability between different users. Biometric features cannot be recovered from the user’s Biometric Capsule or Reference Subject, even when both are stolen. The proposed model can be applied at the signal, feature, or template levels, and facilitates integration with new biometric identification methods to further enhance authentication performance. Moreover, the proposed active, non-intrusive authentication is not only scalable, but also particularly suitable to emerging portable, mobile computing devices. In summary, the proposed approach is (i) usercentric, i.e., highly user friendly without additional burden on users, (ii) provably secure and resistant to attacks including cross-matching attacks, (iii) identity-bearing and privacy-preserving, (iv) replaceable, once Biometric Capsule is compromised, (v) scalable and highly adaptable, (vi) interoperable and single signing on across systems, and (vii) cost-effective and easy to use

The non-occurrence of events

No abstract available