SecureBallot: A secure open source e-Voting system. (1st October 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Agate, Vincenzo; De Paola, Alessandra; Ferraro, Pierluca; Lo Re, Giuseppe; Morana, Marco
• Is Part Of: Journal of network and computer applications. Volume 191(2021)
• Publication Date: 2021-10-01
• Subjects: e-Voting -- Privacy -- Data Security; Microcomputers -- Periodicals; Computer networks -- Periodicals; Application software -- Periodicals; Micro-ordinateurs -- Périodiques; Réseaux d'ordinateurs -- Périodiques; Logiciels d'application -- Périodiques; Application software; Computer networks; Microcomputers; Periodicals; 004.05; 004
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jnca.2021.103165
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1084-8045

Abstract

Abstract: Voting is one of the most important acts through which a community can make a collective decision. In recent years, many works have focused on improving traditional voting mechanisms and, as a result, a wide range of electronic voting (e-Voting) systems have been proposed. Even though some approaches have achieved a proper level of usability, the main challenges of e-Voting are essentially still open: protect the privacy of participants, guarantee secrecy, anonymity, integrity, uniqueness, and authenticity of votes, while making e-Voting as trustful as voting. In order to address this issue, we present SecureBallot, a secure open-source e-Voting system that completely decouples the voter identification and voting phases by means of proven cryptographic technologies. The effectiveness of SecureBallot is demonstrated both theoretically, by presenting a formal verification of the whole protocol and assessing the security properties of its software components, and practically, by proposing a case study of university elections that contains all the challenges of a generic voting process.