Security of Online Voting

The right to vote is in the heart of democracy, equally the confidence of the public about election process is important. in the past election involves long queues and bureaucracy in casting of vote. Things have change, technology is closer to humanity than before. citizens of a particular country, regardless of the country of residence, want to take part in election and electoral processes. This gave birth to online voting initiative.

This process brings inclusion and transparency. However, there are concerns about the security of the platform. one of the threats is injecting malicious payload at the voting client. The malicious payload can change the voter’s vote regardless of the encryption because encryption happens while the payload is sent to voting server. Tools used for this kind of attack are smart to erase footprints and evade security defense software. Another threat is logic bomb viruses. Logic bomb viruses are viruses that are triggered by an event, one of such is date. they are configured to detonate on a particulate date which could be election day. This by making modification to the BIOS of the voter’s system causing the system crash at bootup. Thus, disenfranchising many voters. Social engineering is another threat that affects voting security. Legitimate voting sites are spoof and voters are deviated to vote in a spoofed voting site.

Remediation to some of these security threats is the design and adoption of trust path between the user and the election server. This will prevent malicious code from interfacing with the normal operation. Another is constantly updating the operating system and voting client to mediate vulnerabilities. Good auditing practices should be adopted to prove that the results of an election accurately reflect the intention of the electorate without a need to trust the equipment used to conduct the election.  Proper sensitization of the public and transparency of the electoral process and how to detect false or spoofed site can also go a long way to curb security concerns.

References:

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2018. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Security Considerations for Remote Electronic Voting over the Internet - Avi Rubin AT&T Labs – Research Florham Park, NJ