International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
A Real Time E-Voting System: An Initiative
towards Digital India
NitanKohli1, Himanshu Saurav2, Devesh Samrat3, Pratyush4
8thSemester, Dept of ISE, SJBIT, Bangalore
1. Accuracy
Abstract
2. Simplicity
Nowadays everything is becoming online, so
human tendency has changed they try to do
everything from home using Internet.Election is
also becoming online. But if the voting system is
3. Democracy
4. Verifiability
5. Privacy
6. Security.
made online the security is major concern. The web
based Internet voting system provides security to
For such an internet voting system,
vote when it is transmitting from voting client to
security and privacy are main concerns. From that
voting server. The main tool is the concept of
point of view, an implementation of secure Internet
multiple encryption and decryption. Internet voting
voting system appears to be another application of
with the widespread use of Internet is becoming
cryptography and network security. Electronic
appealing to groups in place of paper based
voting has been intensively studied for over the last
elections or vote by mail election to geographically
twenty years. Many e-voting system, therefore,
distributed voters, as more people are gaining
have been proposed in the last several decades and
access to the Internet.
both the security as well as the effectiveness has
been improved. Nevertheless, to the best of our
Key terms: Multiple encryptions, Independent Key,
Digital Signature, OTP
knowledge, no practical and complete solution has
been found for large scale elections over a network,
say Internet. Our approach suggests a practical
INTRODUCTION
application of the existing cryptographic schemes
Election and voting are well known things in
and digital signature that ensures integrity of the
modern days of Democracy. Electronic online
vote cast by voter and authentication of voter at the
voting over the Internet would be much more
two levels. Design of secure e-voting system over
profitable. Many voters would appreciate the
network is indeed a very difficult task as all the
possibility of voting from anywhere. A company
requirements of the voting system have to be met.
having their offices in different locations, can use
Failure tonsure even one of the specifications can
internet voting for their election, in their employees
lead to chinks and glitches that can be exploited by
from all offices will take part in election from their
a middleman to forge or manipulate the intricate
own offices. Electronic voting, as the name implies,
details. Subsequently, the result of the election is
is the voting process held over electronic media,
computed from the sum of the votes which is
i.e. computers. In general, such internet voting
jointly decrypted by the authorities. A voting
system should satisfy such requirements as follows:
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
scheme must ensure that the voter can keep his vote
Multiple encryption
private.
Multiple encryptions are the process of encrypting
an already encrypted message one or more times,
In traditional elections, a voter usually
goes to the voting stations. After direct person
verification with some IDs, the voter is allowed to
vote. The voter is then given a ballot which allows
a single vote. Once the ballot is used, it cannot be
either using the same or a different algorithm. It is
also known as cascade encryption, cascade
ciphering,
multiple
encryption,
and
super
encipherment. Super encryption refers to the outerlevel encryption of a multiple encryption.
used again. However, this ballot must also be
anonymous. The ballot must identify the voter as
Independent keys
being permitted to vote, but not reveal their actual
Picking any two ciphers, if the key used is the same
identity, and the voter must also be given
for both, the second cipher could possibly undo the
assurances of this. Traditional polling methods trust
first cipher, partly or entirely. This is true of
a lot of parties during the election. The current
ciphers where the decryption process is exactly the
methods require an attacker interact directly with
same as the encryption process—the second cipher
the voting process to disrupt it. There is a greater
would completely undo the first. If an attacker were
chance of getting caught as there will be physical
to recover the key through cryptanalysis of the first
evidence in the traditional polling.
encryption layer, the attacker could possibly
decrypt all the remaining layers, assuming the same
On the other end, internet is harder to
key is used for all layers.
control and manage the security as Network and
internet related attacks are more difficult to trace.
To prevent that risk, one can use keys that
In the traditional polling, you know who is in the
are statistically independent for each layer (e.g.
election room. Also with the internet or network
independent RNGs).
related voting, from all around the world you will
have attackers, not only by the few people in the
The importance of the first layer
With the exception of the one-time pad, no cipher
room.
has been theoretically proven to be unbreakable.
Online voting (e-voting) would be more
Furthermore, some recurring properties may be
convenient, relatively secure and utilize fewer
found in the cipher texts generated by the first
resources. To be able to access e-voting system
cipher. Since those cipher texts are the plaintexts
from a personal, business or even a public library
used by the second cipher, the second cipher may
computer may be more convenient for many people
be rendered vulnerable to attacks based on known
needing to vote. This could potentially be a solution
plaintext properties. This is the case when the first
for the low voter turnout at the polls. However, it is
layer is a program P that always adds the same
still
be
string S of characters at the beginning (or end) of
conducted online or over the internet due to the
all cipher texts (commonly known as a magic
high level of concern over security. The main
number).
questionable
whether
elections
can
objective of the proposed system is to increase the
voting percentage and even to improve the security
of voting system with valid votes.
When found in a file, the string S allows
an operating system to know that the program P has
to be launched in order to decrypt the file. This
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
string should be removed before adding a second
Notions of security
layer. To prevent this kind of attack, one can use
the method provided by Bruce Schneider in the
references below: generate a random pad of the
same size of the plaintext, then XOR the plaintext
with the pad, resulting in a first cipher text. Encrypt
In the foundational paper, Goldwasser, Micali, and
Rivest lay out a hierarchy of attack models against
digital signatures:
1.
the pad and the first cipher text with a different
cipher and a different key, resulting in 2 more
In a key-only attack, the attacker is only
given the public verification key.
2.
In a known message attack, the attacker is
cipher texts. Concatenate the last 2 cipher texts in
given valid signatures for a variety of
order to build the final cipher text. A cryptanalyst
messages known by the attacker but not
must break both ciphers to get any information.
chosen by the attacker.
This will, however, have the drawback of making
3.
In an adaptive chosen message attack, the
the cipher text twice as long as the original
attacker first learns signatures on arbitrary
plaintext. Note, however, that a weak first cipher
messages of the attacker's choice.
may merely make a second cipher that is vulnerable
to a chosen plaintext attack also vulnerable to a
4.
They also describe a hierarchy of attack
results:
known plaintext attack. However, a block cipher
A total break results in the recovery
must not be vulnerable to a chosen plaintext attack
of the signing key.
to be considered secure. Therefore, the second
A universal forgery attack results in
cipher described above is not secure under that
the ability to forge signatures for any
definition, either. Consequently, both ciphers still
message.
need to be broken. The attack illustrates why strong
A selective forgery attack results in a
assumptions are made about secure block ciphers
signature on a message of the
and ciphers that are even partially broken should
adversary's choice.
never be used.
An existential forgery merely results
Digital Signature
in some valid message/signature pair
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for
not already known to the adversary.
demonstrating the authenticity of a digital message
or document. A valid digital signature gives a
recipient reason to believe that the message was
The strongest notion of security, therefore, is
security against existential forgery under an
adaptive chosen message attack.
created by a known sender, such that the sender
cannot
deny
having
sent
the
message
II.RELATED WORK
(authentication and non-repudiation) and that the
Computer scientists who have done work in, or are
message was not altered in transit (integrity).
interested in, electronic voting all seem to agree on
Digital signatures are commonly used for software
two things: Internet voting does not meet the
distribution, financial transactions, and in other
requirements for public elections Currently widely-
cases where it is important to detect forgery or
deployed voting systems need improvement Voting
tampering.
on the Internet using every day PC's offers only
weak security, but its main disadvantages are in the
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areas of anonymity and protection against coercion
not to use this system. Author can see that his
and/or vote selling. It's such a truly bad idea that
architecture increased dependability very much.
there seems to be no credible academic effort to
Also the author considered main requirements of
deploy it at all. The Presidential elections of 2000
voting like secrecy, mobility, accuracy, uniqueness
brought national attention to problems with current
and etc. Paying attention to security needs of
American methods of casting and counting votes in
voting, the author used some approaches to create a
public elections. Most people believe that the
secure System. Author showed that this system will
current system should be changed; there is much
not fail even if some components fail and both
disagreement on how such changes should be
availability and security as the most important
made.
specification of voting systems will be addressed.
As voting via internet is very easy and has no time
This paper [1], review that currently deployed vote
verification methods. By discuss their weaknesses
and money costs for voters. So, system can
anchorage people to take part in the election.
with the aim of proposing a more reliable and
robust vote verification method. Authors in this
Author
[4]
proposed
an
E-voting
paper, sought to propose a vote verification
procedure which ensures voters and candidate’s
technique which would able to verify vote against
confidentiality and accuracy. Many issues still
major possible threats and enables all election
exist, for example, when large number of voters
participants to verify votes.
cast their ballots at the same time, will it cause
denial of service (DOS) in the Internet? How to
For this purpose, they need to investigate a
combination of both technological Authors [2],
proposed design for e voting systems based on
dependable web services. The results got from the
analysis of the evaluation of the proposed design,
design an efficient and secure online voting
system? Nevertheless, at least for the counting
procedure,
different
levels
of
measurements
introduced in our proposal have decreased the risk
for unfairness in actual elections.
presented that solution, increase the dependability
to a great extent. The author also explained that this
The proposed deign in paper [5] contains that the
design can respond to main requirement of e-
voting can be done only at the places where the
voting. The availability is one of key attributes and
voting places are installed. Though voting can be
the most important requirement for e-voting as
done using mobile terminals at any places if the
important
fulfilled.
wireless network develops further in the forth
Considering that the security is a very important
coming days, the additional requirements for
requirement of e-voting systems, author has used
security will be required depending on the wireless
the existing solutions to achieve web service
circumstances. And the way of authentication must
security.
be provided more strongly and there should not be
as
security,
which
is
coercive voting or exposure of data in the wireless
Author of paper [3], proposed architecture for
internet voting system based on dependable web
services. Then the author modelled this system with
RBD and Reward Petri Nets, and finally evaluated
these models quantitatively. Also by looking at the
network. Voting is a key way of democracy
reflecting the nation’s intention. Therefore, a study
on security technology applied to the electronic
voting system should be progressed continuously in
the future.
results of evaluation, author can decide to use or
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
Author [6] proposed an internet voting
This paper [9], review the various security
protocol. The proposed internet voting protocol
attacks in computer networks such as active and
adopts blind signature to protect the content of the
passive attacks. Once the local area networks get
ballot during casting. As we believe that a secure
connected to Internet, all the attacks exploit the
electronic voting system do not only allow all
network security breaches. The network security is
voters to verify the voting result but also avoid
very complex, difficult to be designed and more
ballot buying, the proposed internet voting protocol
then all difficult to be assured. It is easier to prove
is verifiable and discourages ballot buying at the
that a network can be penetrated, than to prove that
same time. Any unauthorized candidate or party
it is completely sure. Security system is expensive
can still try to buy ballots during the election.
and introduces unpleasant user limitations. The
However, no voter can prove which ballot was cast
security system does not grow the network
by him/her after the declaration of the election
performance, but the threats are real and the risk is
result. In other words, ballot buying may still exist,
too big without a proper security policy.
but the ballot buyer cannot be assured that the voter
EXISTING
will mark the ballot as the buyer want.
SYSTEM
AND
DISADVANTAGES
Dr. Michael Shamos of CMU provides a
sharp counterpoint [7] to Neumann and Mercuri's
views. While his Six Commandments summary of
requirements for a voting system is very similar to
others' requirements, he's less afraid of the
catastrophic failures and sweeping fraud made
possible by imperfections in electronic voting
machines actually occurring in a real election.
Shamos is also much less impressed with paper
ballots than are Neumann and Mercuri. The author
places a great deal of faith in decentralization to
make fraud difficult to commit and easy to detect.
Dr.Shamos even likes DRE machines.
Rebecca
Mercuri
―Mercuri method‖
[8]
Vote Verification through Open Standard: a
Roadmap sought to propose a vote verification
technique which would able to verify vote against
major possible threats and enables all election
participants to verify votes. For this purpose, they
need to investigate a combination of both
technological and procedural solutions
An Architecture for E-Voting Systems Based on
Dependable Web Services proposed design for e
voting systems based on dependable web services.
The results got from the analysis of the evaluation
of the proposed design, presented that solution,
invented
the
for electronic voting. A
increase the dependability to a great extent.
Ensuring
Voters
and
Candidates’
critical component of this method is very similar to
Confidentiality in E-voting Systems proposed an
the Caltech/MIT proposal: a voting machine must
E-voting procedure which ensures voters and
produce human-readable hardcopy paper results,
candidate’s confidentiality and accuracy. Many
which can be verified by the voter before the vote is
issues still exist, for example, when large number
cast, and manually recounted later if necessary. The
of voters cast their ballots at the same time, will it
author philosophy and Neumann's are very similar;
cause denial of service (DOS) in the Internet? How
in fact, they've written papers together on the
to design an efficient and secure online voting
subject.
system?
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
The proposed deign in paper A Study on the
signature that ensures integrity of the vote cast by
Electronic Voting System using blind Signature
voter and authentication of voter at the two levels.
for Anonymity contains that the voting can be
Design of secure e-voting system over a network is
done only at the places where the voting places are
indeed a very difficult task as all the requirements
installed. Though voting can be done using mobile
of the voting system have to be met.
terminals at any places if the wireless network
develops further in the forthcoming days, the
Failure to ensure even one of the specifications can
additional requirements for security will be
lead to chinks and glitches that can be exploited by
required depending on the wireless circumstances.
a middleman to forge or manipulate the intricate
details. Subsequently, the Result of the election is
A Verifiable Electronic Voting Scheme over the
computed from the sum of the votes which is
Internet proposed an internet voting protocol. The
jointly decrypted by the authorities. A voting
proposed internet voting protocol adopts blind
scheme must ensure that the voter can keep his vote
signature to protect the content of the ballot during
private.
casting. As we believe that a secure electronic
voting system do not only allow all voters to verify
the voting result but also avoid ballot buying, the
proposed internet voting protocol is verifiable and
Advantages
Provides Security from all types of attacks
when vote is travelling from voting client to
voting server
discourages ballot buying at the same time. Any
unauthorized candidate or party can still try to buy
Security threats from passive as well as security
threats from active intruder are addressed here.
ballots during the election. However, no voter can
We can also use this system for taking the
prove which ballot was cast by him/her after the
opinion of a voter on certain issue.
declaration of the election result. In other words,
Saves money and time compared to traditional
ballot buying may still exist, but the ballot buyer
bvoting system. Reduces the counting time of votes
cannot be assured that the voter will mark the ballot
since the results here can be declared instantly.
as the buyer want.
Anatomy
and
Types
of
Attacks
against
System Architecture Diagram
Computer Networks review the various security
attacks in computer networks such as active and
passive attacks. Once the local area networks get
connected to Internet, all the attacks exploit the
network security breaches. The network security is
very complex, difficult to be designed and more
than all difficult to be assured. It is easier to prove
that a network can be penetrated, than to prove that
it is completely sure.
III. OUR APPROACH
The approach suggests a practical application of the
existing
cryptographic
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schemes
and
digital
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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume 35 Number 3- May 2016
IV.CONCLUSION
The conclusion of this paper is that online e-voting
system provides a secured Internet voting using the
concept of digital signature and multiple
encryptions. It also fulfils the various security
features such as authentication, integrity, nonrepudiation. This system saves money, time
requirement in traditional voting system.
V.REFERENCE
[1] Ali Fawzi Najm Al-Shammari, Sergio Tessaris" Vote
Verification through Open Standard: A Roadmap”, 978-14577-0953-1/11IEEE2011.
[2] Amir Omidi and Mohammad Abdollahi Azgomi, “An
Architecture for E-Voting Systems Based on Dependable
Web Services” 978-1-4244-5700-7/10 ©2009 IEEE.
[3] Amir Omidi, Saeed Moradi “Modeling and Quantitative
Evaluation of an Internet Voting System Based on
Dependable WebServices”, 978-1-4673-0479-5/12/©2012
IEEE.
[4] Haijun Pan, Edwin Hou and Nirwan Ansari” Ensuring
Voters and Candidates’ Confidentiality in E-voting
Systems” 978-1-61284-680-4/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE.
[5] Seo-Il Kang and Im-Yeong Lee “A Study on the Electronic
Voting System using blind Signature for Anonymity”, IEEE
2006 International Conference on Hybrid Information
Technology (ICHIT'06) 0-7695-2674- 8/06.
[6] Chun-Ta Li, Min-Shiang Hwang , Yan-Chi Lai “A
Verifiable Electronic Voting Scheme Over the Internet”,
2009 Sixth International Conference on Information
Technology: New Generations.
[7] Lazaros Kyrillidis, Sheila Cobourne, Keith Mayes, Song
Dongy and Konstantinos Markantonakis” Distributed eVoting using the Smart Card Web Server” 978-1-46733089-3/12@ 2012 IEEE.
[8] Y ousfi Souheib, Derrode Stephane, “Watermarking in evoting for large scale
3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE.
election”,
978-1-4673-1520-
[9] Prof. Emil Sofron, Prof. Ion Tutanescu, “Anatomy and
Types of Attacks against Computer Networks”, 978-14673- 1520-3/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE.
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