Online E-Voting Prototype With PTC Web Services v1

Applying MESE processes to Improve Online E-Voting Prototype System with Paillier Threshold Cryptosystem Web Services
Version 1.00
A project submitted to the Faculty of Graduate School, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Engineering in Software Engineering Department of Computer Science
Prepared by Hakan Evecek CS701 Dr. Chow Spring 2007
Online E-Voting Prototype System
Evecek / Page 1 of 37
This project for the Masters of Engineering in Software Engineer degree by Hakan Evecek has been approved for the Department of Computer Science By
_______________________________________________________ Dr. C. Edward Chow, Chair
_______________________________________________________ Dr. Richard Weiner
_______________________________________________________ Dr. Xiaobo Zhou
Date
Table of Contents
Online E-Voting System Project Documentation................................................................4 Abstract................................................................................................................................6 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................7 2. E-Voting System Related Literature................................................................................9 2.1. Public Key Cryptography.........................................................................................9 2.2. Homomorphic Encryption......................................................................................10 2.3. Zero Knowledge Proofs..........................................................................................10 2.5. Cryptographic Voting Protocol...............................................................................11 2.6. Issues in secure e-voting system.............................................................................12 2.7. Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA)..................................................................................................................13 2.8. Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT).....................................................................14 3. Online E-Voting System Project Description................................................................17 3.1. Paillier Threshold Crytosystem Web Services Architecture and Design...............17 4.1. E-Voting System Overview....................................................................................21 4.1.1 User Login........................................................................................................22 4.1.2. Election Set-Up................................................................................................23 4.1.3. Creating Ballots...............................................................................................24 4.1.4. Vote Format.....................................................................................................25 4.2. Voting.....................................................................................................................26 4.2.1. Creating the Vote.............................................................................................26 4.3. Tally the Vote.........................................................................................................27 5. PTC Web Services Efficiency Improvement.................................................................28 5.1 Pre-Computation......................................................................................................28 5.2 Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT).......................................................................28 5.3 Paillier Scheme Pre-computations for Decryption..................................................29 6. Results ...........................................................................................................................30 6.1 Pre-Computation Performance Evaluations ............................................................30 6.2. Defects Found ........................................................................................................32 6.3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................34 6.5. Future Suggestions..................................................................................................35 7. References.....................................................................................................................36
Online E-Voting System Project Documentation The subsequent files are located on the following web site: http://cs.uccs.edu/~gsc/pub/master/hevecek/doc/ o CS701Proposal_EVotingPrototype.doc : This document describes what the project would be for the advisory committee. It was submitted in February 2007. o EVoting_SRS Document.doc: This is the online E-Voting prototype System Requirements Specification document for the project. The demonstration windows application created used to get the requirements for the online tool. It also has the use cases. o EVoting_SDS Document.doc : This describes the internal design of the project. This document has both black box and white box designs. Also class diagrams from the web services are also prepared for documenting although they were developed previously. It has the main use cases to make it easier to create the SDS. It also involves database design. o EVoting_Test Plan.doc: The tests for the project are documented in this document. Test plans cover all the requirements testing. o Online E-Voting Prototype with PTC Web Services.doc: This is the project report document. It is the final report for the project that has discussions about e-voting system. There are some e-voting related papers researched about the online e-voting system implementation and I tried to explain why it is so hard to implement, develop and deploy today by using these papers. Also in this report for the PTC design section and PTC develop description, [15] is used. Lastly, some efficiency improvements
applied in the code and according to the results that will be explained, it has improved. o Paillier ThresholdCryptoService_UserGuide_Updated.doc: This document that is the user guide for the PTC web services. Source files for the code is placed in the link below: http://cs.uccs.edu/~gsc/pub/master/hevecek/src/
Abstract
The purpose of this masters project is to develop an Online E-Voting prototype system utilizing the Paillier Threshold Cryptosystem (PTC) web services and applying MESE processes to it in an attempt to find possible solutions to further improve existing PTC web services. Online voting (e-voting) would be more convenient, relatively secure and utilize fewer resources. To be able to access e-voting system from a personal, business or even a public library computer may be more convenient for many people needing to vote. This could potentially be a solution for the low voter turnout at the polls. However, it is still questionable whether elections can be conducted online or over the internet due to the high level of concern over security. Systems considered to be apart of e-voting are Machine readable (create, read, count) ballot systems, Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems, voting using mobile devices and internet voting [1]. As part of this project, an online e-voting prototype system has been constructed using the demonstration windows application tool created for PTC web services. A pre-computation process is applied due to efficiency improvements. The details of this optimization and improvement in the web services process will be explained in the subsequent sections. In addition to the application of the pre-computation to the process, the Chinese Remainder Theorem can be applied during the decryption process. This change might not be as noticeable as the pre-computation, however it will make it more efficient as the calculation gets easier.
1. Introduction
In traditional elections, a voter usually goes to the voting stations. After direct person-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 used again. However, this ballot must also be anonymous. The ballot must identify the voter as being permitted to vote, but not reveal their actual identity, and the voter must also be given assurances of this. Traditional polling methods trust a lot of parties during the election. The current methods require an attacker interact directly with the voting process to disrupt it. There is a greater chance of getting caught as there will be physical evidence in the traditional polling. On the other end, internet is harder to control and manage the security as Network and internet related attacks are more difficult to trace. In the traditional polling, you know who is in the election room. Also with the internet or network related voting, from all around the world you will have attackers, not only by the few people in the room [3]. Figure 1 shows the hierarchy of the voting schemes just discussed [17].
Voting Schemes
Traditional Voting
Electronic Voting
Paper Ballots
Lever Systems
Remote Evoting
Poll Station E-Voting
Internet E voting
DRE machines
Chaums scheme
Figure 1: The categorization of the voting schemes [17]. Another issue with e-voting is educating the voters. We can not consider that all the users are computer gurus and they will use the e-voting systems easily. When evoting is designed it needs to be easy to use. We should consider the fact that a large portion of the voting public has a very little knowledge about the computers. According to some of the research done by the Public Policy Institute of California over 50% of 1844 years of age voters prefers Internet voting [3]. Some recent studies have focused on e-voting, its security concerns and making it more secure. Below is the list of related literature about e-voting:
2. E-Voting System Related Literature

2.1. Public Key Cryptography Public key cryptography, also known as asymmetric cryptography, is a form of cryptography in which each user will have a key that didnt have to be kept secret. Having this public key will not inhibit the systems secrecy as a message encrypted with the public key can be decrypted only with the corresponding private key. The private key is kept secret, while the public key may be widely distributed. The public and private keys are related mathematically. The private key cannot be practically derived from the public key [4]. The two main branches of public key cryptography are: Public key encryption a message encrypted with a recipient's public key cannot be decrypted by anyone except the recipient possessing the corresponding private key. This is used to ensure confidentiality [4]. The problem with the public key encryption is the intruder can easily replace the private key with his when the sender requests the public key. This means the newly received public key will have the intruders private key and he can easily decrypt the message. To avoid this issue digital signature can be used. Digital Signatures a message signed with a sender's private key can be verified by anyone who has access to the sender's public key, thereby proving that the sender signed it and that the message has not been tampered with. This is used to ensure authenticity [4]. Conversely, Secret key cryptography, also known as symmetric cryptography uses a single secret key for both encryption and decryption. It is also known as one-key or private-key encryption. The requirement is the shared secret that both parties should
Online E-Voting Prototype System Evecek / Page 9 of 37
have a copy. In this e-voting prototype shared keys will be used for the users encryption in our tests. 2.2. Homomorphic Encryption The encryption algorithm E ( ) is homomorphic if given E(x) and E(y), one can obtain E(x y) without decrypting x; y for some operation . In that case, homomorphic encryption is a special type of cryptography in which the sum of two encrypted values is equal to the encrypted sum of the values. In simple mathematics, this is equivalent to the communicative property of multiplication. For a majority of cryptographic algorithms, this does not hold true. It is one of the schemes that can be used in e-voting especially to be able to tally the votes even though the results are encrypted. There are few cryptosystems which uses homographic encryption. They will be discussed in the next section.
2.3. Zero Knowledge Proofs In cryptography it is often needed to prove some statement to someone without giving extra information. This is accomplished by Zero Knowledge Proofs. Especially for the authentication systems Zero Knowledge Proofs can be used. For example, a party might want to prove his identity with secret information and does not want the other party to learn anything about this secret. In other words, second party can only know the correctness of the statement or identity of the first party and no more information. 2.4. Threshold Cryptography Threshold Cryptography is a term used to describe a cryptosystem in which the ability to perform a cryptographic function can be distributed amongst several
participants in such a way that only through cooperation of a specified subset of the participants can the operation be performed. In addition, if less than the required number of participants attempts to perform the action, no useful information can be constructed or obtained. The threshold value is typically denoted by the letter t. In a threshold system as defined here, only t+1 cooperating authorities can perform the desired cryptographic operation. The essential components of a threshold cryptography system are a key generation algorithm, an encryption algorithm, a share decryption algorithm, and a combining algorithm [5]. First, the key generation algorithm generates the public key parameters, a set of secret key shares, and a set of verifier keys. The secret key shares are distributed to the participants in a secure manner. The encryption algorithm provides encryption services for an appropriately-sized message m by applying the public key parameters and an encryption algorithm to generate the ciphertext c. The share decryption algorithm is used by each participant with a secret key share to partially decrypt the encrypted message c. Each participant also uses the verifier key
corresponding to the secret key share to generate a proof of correct encryption. The combining algorithm takes all of the partial decryptions or decryption shares, verifies their corresponding proofs, and combines the decryption shares to reveal the original message m. The combining step only succeeds if t+1 valid decryption shares are used.
2.5. Cryptographic Voting Protocol Basic requirements for electronic voting Privacy All votes should be kept secret Completeness All valid votes should be counted correctly
Soundness Any invalid vote should not be counted Unreusability No voter can vote twice Eligibility Only authorized voters can cast a vote Fairness Nothing can affect the voting
Extended Requirements for electronic voting Robustness faulty behavior of any reasonably sized coalition of
participants can be tolerated. In other words, the system must be able to tolerate to certain faulty conditions and must be able to manage these situations. coercer. There are four main approaches to efficient and fully secure elections: Schemes based on homomorphic encryption Schemes based on mixnets Heterodox schemes Schemes based on secret sharing among several mutually distrustful Universal Verifiability any party can verify the result of the voting Receipt-freeness Voters are unable to prove the content of his/her vote Incoercibility Voter cannot be coerced into casting a particular vote by a
election authorities.
2.6. Issues in secure e-voting system The issues behind e-voting need to be examined conservatively before such potentially dangerous moves are made. In a voting system, privacy and security are desired, but are not always simultaneously achievable at a reasonable cost. In online
voting systems, verification is very difficult to do accurately, and anonymity is difficult to ensure. This document shows some of the many problems with practical e-voting and why public elections are too important to trust to it [3]. When e-voting system scheme is considered there are different modules involved to consider the security and design. Three important phases of having a secure system are considered as design, development and deployment. In other words, it is important tp have the foundation in designing a secure and practical e-voting scheme to produce a secure, efficient and publicly acceptable implementation of voting schemes in the real world. 2.7. Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) Any additional check for the security or spam will decrease the security concerns users have today for the e-voting systems. A CAPTCHA is a program that can generate and grade tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. In our project this is used to confirm that users are trying to vote instead of the automated computer systems. CAPTCHAs have several applications for practical security like preventing comment spam in blogs, protecting web registrations, online polls where you want to make sure that humans are voting not the programs, preventing dictionary attacks, search engine bots, worms and spasm etc. Official Captcha site has published some guidelines for it [6]. Accessibility: It should be easily accessible for reading the text. If it is a problem due to legal reasons audio CAPTCHA can also be used. Image Security: Images should be distorted randomly. Without random distortion, application will be open to the attacks.
Script Security: By using this, systems are closed to any computer attacks. However we also need to make sure that scripts used are not easily accessible so that attacker will find the easy way around them to use the systems. Security Even After Wide Spread Adoption: Some of the sites might be using the sites that have CAPTCHAs setup. It is important that the security level kept the same and these sites are still secure even after a significant number of sites adopt them [6].
2.8. Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) On several papers for improving the efficiency, CRT is recommended to use both on encryption and encryption process [16], [21]. As described below CRT is not affecting to the multiplication. In other words, multiplying two big prime numbers and processing the multiplication will be the same as processing them first and then multiplying. This way the process will be done with smaller numbers and will be faster. Then multiplication can be done.
Theorem Statement: Suppose n1, n2, , nk are integers which are pairwise coprime. Then, for any given integers a1,a2, , ak, there exists an integer x solving the system of simultaneous congruences
Furthermore, all solutions x to this system are congruent modulo the product N = n1n2nk.
Sometimes, the simultaneous congruences can be solved even if the ni's are not pairwise coprime. A solution x exists if and only if:
All solutions x are then congruent modulo the least common multiple of the ni. In that case, We can perform 2 operations mod p and mod q like below. x a mod p, x b mod q,
The Chinese Remainder Theorem can be used to efficiently reduce the decryption workload of the cryptosystems [21]. To see this, one has to employ the functions Lp and Lq defined over
By
Decryption can therefore be made faster by separately computing the message mod p and mod q and recombining modular residues afterwards:
With pre-computations
Where p - 1 and q - 1 have to be replaced by in the fast variant.
3. Online E-Voting System Project Description In this project, PTC Web services are used. In this section, I will explain how the PTC web services work. Efficiency improvement that will be applied to the PTC web services required some changes on some of the classes used. Applying more improvements will need more changes on the classes where calculations applied. Details will be explained in the following sections of this report. 3.1. Paillier Threshold Crytosystem Web Services Architecture and Design
The Paillier cryptosystem is a probabilistic asymmetric algorithm for public key cryptography, first published by Pascal Paillier in 1999. This probabilistic scheme has generated a good amount of interest and further study since it was discovered. The problem of computing n-th residue classes is believed to be computationally difficult to compute. This is known as the Composite Residuosity (CR). The scheme is an additive homomorphic cryptosystem; this means that, given only the public-key and the encryption of m1 and m2, one can compute the encryption of m1 + m2. One of the properties of Paillier as mentioned above is the homomorphic property which can allow this cryptosystem to do simple addition operations on several encrypted values and obtain the encrypted sum. The encrypted sum can later be decrypted without ever knowing the encrypted values that made up the sum. Due to these useful characteristics of Paillier, the scheme has been suggested for use in threshold cryptosystems, secret sharing schemes and the design of voting protocols especially the e-voting systems. Another property of Paillier cryptosystem is self-blinding. This property is essential as it means a ciphertext can be re-encrypted with a random parameter without
changing the underlying cleartext and without changing the ability to decrypt the ciphertext using the original keypair[15]. Probabilistic property of Paillier will help to protect voters privacy since none of the votes will be encrypted to the same ciphertext. Paillier has described three different methods in his research. PTC Web services that will be used in this project are using one of these three methods. Below are the schemes invented by Pascal Paillier [21] and
Scheme 1: Scheme 1 is probabilistic encryption scheme based on composite residuosity. According to theorem mentioned in his paper [21] Scheme 1 is one-way if an only if the Computational Composite Residuosity Assumption holds. It is also semantically secure if and only if the Decisional Composite Residuosity Assumption hold. n is the multiplication of two prime numbers, n = pq. g is randomly selected base. This can be done by checking whether . This is done on the
PTC web services used. n and g are public parameters and (p, q) or remains private.
Encryption: plaintext m < n randomly select r < n ciphertext c = Decryption: ciphertext c < n2
Table 3.1 Pailliers Scheme 1 [21]
Scheme 2: Scheme 2 is a trapdoor permutation based on composite residuosity. As described above n is the product of two prime numbers. From the table below, there are steps explained for decryption. To be able to retrieve m, all these steps will be required. Scheme 2 is one-way if and only if RSA [n,a] is hard [21]. Encryption: plaintext m < n2 split m into m1, m2 such that m = m1 + nm2 ciphertext c = Decryption: ciphertext c < n2
plaintext m = m1 + n m2 Table 3.2 Pailliers Scheme 2 [21] Scheme 3: Third scheme is the variant with fast decryption. As this is a fast decryption, this scheme can be applied to improve the efficiency. In the following sections this scheme will be re-visited and it will be recommended for efficiency improvements in the current web services. Encryption: plaintext m < n randomly select r < n ciphertext = Decryption: ciphertext c < n2 Table 3.3 Pailliers Scheme 3 [21] It is assumed that g same secret keys.
for some 1 . In other words and are not the
Below are the steps for the key generation, encryption and decryption used [22]. Key generation 1. 2. 3. 4. Choose two large prime numbers p and q randomly. Compute n = pq and = lcm(p 1, q 1) Select random integer g where Ensure n divides the order of g by checking the existence of the following
multiplicative inverse:
where function L is defined as The public (encryption) key is (n,g). The private (decryption) key is (,). Encryption 1. 2. 3. Let m be a message to be encrypted where Select random r where Compute ciphertext as:
Decryption 1. 2. Ciphertext Compute message:
It is the same as the scheme 1 described above. This computation takes some time due to the large prime numbers used. The secret key is SK = (n) = lcm((p-1),(q-1)).
4. Online E-Voting Prototype System The capabilities of the Paillier Threshold Cryptography system has been demonstrated on an Online E-Voting Prototype system created for this project. This is a prototype and should not be used in the real world scenarios. It shows the use of the Paillier Threshold Cryptography Web Service. It also has some additional security features like Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) added to decrease the security concerns. This prototype system SRS and SDS document are all created and they can be downloaded from
http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~gsc/pub/master/hevecek/doc/ folder.
4.1. E-Voting System Overview The e-voting system allows for 1 out of L candidate ballots. No options are provided for n out of L ballots or write-in ballots. An election may consist of more than one ballot. An election administrator creates the ballots and other election
parameters. The administrator requests the Paillier threshold encryption parameters from the PTC Web Service during the initial election set-up. The administrator submits the election parameters to a VotingService web service, and saves the election parameters (including the cryptosystem parameters) to an XML file. Voters then load the election parameters by opening the XML file, make their selection(s), and cast their encrypted vote(s) to the VotingService web service. During the tally phase, the votes are multiplied together, and, due to the homomorphic properties of the Paillier cryptosystem, the product can be decrypted to reveal the sum total of all the votes [15].
4.1.1 User Login User Login is the first form users connected when the voting page is loaded from the internet. It will have a connection to the database to validate the user credentials. User types are either voters or Administrators. It is assumed that users have used another interface or form to register for voting. In the same login page there will be Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) validation with random numbers. Six digit random numbers will be created each time the page is loaded to be able to stop any kind of computer attacks to the voting site.
Figure 4.1 User Login Form
4.1.2. Election Set-Up The election administrator uses the Election Builder form to create or modify an election (before the election is posted to the voting web service). To create a new election, the administrator clicks on the New Election button. A new election is created and a unique election id is assigned. The administrator must then enter his/her name and a descriptive title for the election. Election page is the most important
Administrator page as it has all the functionality setup for the election. Before ballots can be added to the election, the encryption parameters must be specified and retrieved from the web service. This must occur before the ballots are added or created, since the vote format is dependent on the specified key size. The administrator clicks to the Encryption Parameters . This button will be available after the Administrator details are entered. Once this button is clicked, the administrator specifies the key size and whether or not to encrypt the returned key shares. The administrator can then add the key share owner information for each owner that is to receive a secret key share. If the key shares will be encrypted, the administrator will be required to enter the owners username which is the same as the users login and certificate name to be able to choose automatically. Once all owners have been added, the administrator selects the cryptosystem threshold value and then clicks Send Request, which sends the request to the web service. In the current configuration, a key size of larger than 256 and sometimes 512 bits will result in such a delay that a timeout error is caused, so it is not recommended that key sizes greater than 256 be used for the web application. The web service will generate the requested parameters, encrypt the key shares (if specified), and return them [15]. The Encryption Parameter Request form will
transfer the returned parameters to the Election Builder form and close automatically. The election crypto parameters are displayed at the bottom of the Election Builder form. Lastly, on the same election page ballots can be added for the election. If the ballots are created prior to the election creation page, the list will appear in the window for administrator to choose from the list. They can be added to any election by highlighting from the list and clicking to theAdd Ballots button. If the ballot is valid, it will be imported into the election and displayed in the Election Summary textbox in the form. After all the users, ballots and Administrator details loaded from the election form, the Administrator will need to save and post the election to be able to initialize election voting. The election will be saved as an XML file. First save the election by clicking to the Save Election button. It will be saved in the web server
App_Data/XMLFiles Folder. Details of the folder structures are documented in the Software Design Specification document. Posting the election to the voting web service is a non-reversible operation in the application unless the details are manually deleted from the database. Post Election button will be enabled after saving the election. To post the election, click to Post Election button. A web service call will be made that posts the election data to the web service, which then creates the appropriate database entries that are used to manage the election [15].
4.1.3. Creating Ballots Existing ballots can now be added to the election or new ballots can be created using the options from the Election form. To create a new ballot, the administrator will need to click to the New Ballot link from the elections page. It will open the Ballot
Builder form. A new ballot will be created and the random ballot id displayed in the form. Administrator will need to put ballot issue/ problem, and then enter all of the available choices, one at a time by using the Add Choices button and the text box. Each choice is entered by typing the appropriate text. A choice can be deleted by selecting the choice in the list, and clicking Delete Candidate button. When the ballot is complete, the ballot should be saved by clicking Save ballot button. This button will get all the details entered and save the ballot in XML format in the web server App_Data\XML Files\Ballots folder. The Ballot Builder Form must be closed and then re-opened in order to create another ballot. Ballot creation page is also accessible from the Administrator menu.
4.1.4. Vote Format When a ballot is added to an election, the format of the vote for that ballot is derived from the key size chosen for the election and the number of candidate choices on the ballot. These two values determine the maximum number of voters allowed. The total size of the vote is limited to the key size k (in bits). The vote is split into c bit fields where c is the number of candidates. The size of the bit fields vc= k/c. However, vc is limited to 32 bits so that each candidates field will fit into a 32-bit integer (for ease of extraction only). Therefore, if k/c > 32, vc=32 and only the first 32*c bits of the vote will be used. To cast a vote, a voter votes the value 2^(ic*vc) where ic is the desired candidates ballot index (0,,c-1). By using votes of this format, the tally can be computed by multiplying all of the votes together and decrypting the product. Due to the
homomorphic property of the Paillier cryptosystem, the multiplication carried out in the ciphertext space corresponds to addition in the cleartext space, and thus the decryption of
the product will contain the summed votes for each candidate. Each candidates bit field can then be extracted and evaluated to determine the total number of votes for that candidate [15].
4.2. Voting 4.2.1. Creating the Vote Once an election has been created, saved, and posted to the election web service, voters can create and cast votes. After the user login page user logs in either as an Administrator or a voter. If the user logs in as an Administrator, he will have a link from the menu for the voting page. If the user has logged in with voter credentials, then he will be connected to the voting page automatically. When connected to the voting page, a list box will have all the elections available for the voters. This list is the list of the elections in the elections folder. After highlighting the election and clicking to the button to load the election, election details will be loaded for voters to vote. The ballots from the election will be loaded, with each issue being loaded into the issue text box, and its corresponding choices loaded into the textbox to the right (the choices textbox). The voter can make his/her choice simply by clicking on the desired choice. That issues choices will then be displayed in the choices textbox. Again, select the desired choice by clicking on it in the choices textbox. Once a choice has been selected, the ballot issue and the selected choice will appear in the Current Votes textbox. To the right of the issue question and the selected choice is the hex value of the vote to be cast. Once all choices have been made, the voter can submit his/her vote by selecting Submit Vote button at the bottom of the page. This button will cal the web services and save the vote into the database. Once the vote is submitted, no changes can be made.
At any time after submitting his/her vote, a voter can check the posted values of his/her vote by selecting Check Submitted Vote button. This invokes a web service call to the voting web service which retrieves the encrypted vote values posted for that election [15].
4.3. Tally the Vote Administrator will have access to use the Tall Vote option during the election process to tally the vote. Administrator will need to click the Tally/Decrypt Vote button on the menu. The Tally form will open. In a list box elections list will appear for Administrator to choose and tall the vote. If the secret key shares were encrypted, the program will automatically get the certificates according to the issued names of the users to decrypt the owners Paillier secret key share. Thats why it is important for
Administrator to collect all the registration details from the user to be able to create the users. He/she will assign the right certificates so that there wont be any issues in the future process like tally / decrypt vote process. The product of the votes for each ballot is then calculated and displayed both encrypted and decrypted, and the candidates tallies are extracted from the decrypted bit field and displayed.
5. PTC Web Services Efficiency Improvement This can be done in three different ways. 5.1 Pre-Computation This change will be done for the key generation where the prime numbers will be calculated prior. Any real-time computations will slow down the process on cryptography application. Any pre-computation will improve the efficiency of the application. This pre-computation can be done via background thread setup in the application.
<setting name="ServerPath" serializeAs="String"> <value>c:\inetpub\wwwroot\EVoting\PreComputation\</value > </setting> <setting name="PrimeNumberCalculationType" serializeAs="String"> <value>DB</value> </setting>
This pre-computation is applied to the SafePrimeNumbers generator function. This function is used for the pre-computation.
5.2 Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) Chinese Remainder Theorem is one of the most useful theorems of number theory as it says it is possible to reconstruct the integers in a certain range from their residues module a set of pair wise relatively prime module. Details of CRT is explained in the previous sections. Paillier has suggested to use CRT for especially key generation and decryption processes [21]. Also CRT has become standard today in many RSA applications as it increases the decryption up to 4 times [16]. Decryptions can be made faster by separately computing the messages mod p and mod q instead of mod n and recombining modular residues later.
With pre-computations:
where p-1 and q-1 have to be placed by 5.3 Paillier Scheme Pre-computations for Decryption Scheme 1 used in this project is not the most efficient one especially for decryption as it is also mentioned in Pascal papers study [21]. Scheme 3 improves the performance of decryption and he suggested in the same paper to pre-compute the constant instead of only p and q values applied in this project. Also
another constant parameter below can be pre-computed [21].
These constant pre-computations can be done with the same methods used in this project.
6. Results 6.1 Pre-Computation Performance Evaluations Pre-computations results are put into both the text file and the Pre-Computation tables created in the SQL Server. Both the text file and the database solutions have increased the performance in other words response time more than 80% in average for both 256 and 128 bit key sizes. Unfortunately this test failed with 1024 and 512 bit key sizes due to time out issues. There is a parameter setup in the settings to use the random prime number generator either real time or text file or database. As a default it will set to the real time. XML solution also needs some improvements and this will be suggested in the future improvements section of the project.
With Pre-Computation Algorithm Regular Avg Max Min 128 bit 0.283 0.368 0.203
Real Time Computation 128 bit 1.937 2.804 0.329
Change % 128 bit 86% 38% 85%
Table 6.1a 128 bit safe Prime numbers calculation table

Encrpytion Parameters Process Period with Key Size 128
3500 3000
Time (msec)
2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Number (#)
Table 6.1b 128 bit safe Prime numbers calculation.
With Pre-Computation Algorithm Regular Avg Max Min 256 bit 0.381 0.542 0.291
Real Time Computation 256 bit 2.133 2.926 0.306
Change % 256 bit 82% 81% 5%
Table 6.2a 256 bit safe Prime numbers calculation table
Encrpytion Parameters Process Period with Key Size 256

4000 3500 3000 Time (msec) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Num ber (#)
Table 6.2b 256 bit safe Prime numbers calculation.
6.2. Defects Found These defects are listed in the order in which they were found. It only includes those defects found while creating the automated test suites, not those found and fixed during software development.
DefectID 1: When the election is created, it can not save title and username details in the xml file. Solution: _election parameter stored in the session was not initialized in the beginning of the function. After initializing it is fixed.
DefectID 2: Back button is required after the ballots are created. Solution: After ballots are created, back button is required by the Administrator to be able to complete the election creation or ballot creation. Two link buttons are added, one to the Main menu link and the other one is a link to the Elections page.
DefectID 3: Outside the compiler application was not able to respond to the certificate assignment for the users. Solution: This is fixed by assigning ports each time we run the application. A dedicated port needs to be used by the administrator.
DefectID 4: XML output for the pre-computation does not work properly and need to be fixed. Only real time computation and DB computations work which is enough to show the efficiency improvements in the code. Solution: This need to be fixed in the future releases.
DefectID 5: User Login page does not hide the password text. Solution: This is fixed by changing the text box property.
DefectID 6: User Name is the same as the certificate issued name used in the certificate. If these names do not match, certificate can not be used and this will throw an error. To minimize the issues, user name from the login page will be passed to the
voting page automatically. This enhancement needs to be applied as this is an additional requirement. Solution: This is done by using Sessions in ASP .Net. username session is created and the username is passed to the next form which is voting form.
6.3. Conclusion Online E-voting system is a prototype developed by using PTC Web services. As the need for voting system has started to increase and some organizations or countries has started to look for the solutions, this can be the starting point to improve and deploy in the real world scenarios. In this project I have tried to explain the importance of Paillier cryptosystem, , its unique properties and its application areas especially in e-voting. We need to keep in mind htat voting is not the only process during the whole voting processes. There might be some other security concerns that need to be considered when such an application is built for practical reasons. Lastly, Paillier Cryptosystem efficiency can be improved as suggested in many papers [1], [8]. Random numbers pre-computation is one of the ways implemented in this project. It has increased the calculation more than one of the ways. In the next section, I will be listing all improvements that can be done to this web service and application.
6.5. Future Suggestions In this project E-Voting Online prototype application has been implemented. PTC Web Services are used for the encryption and decryption process. The method implemented and used on the PTC Web services is the first scheme invented by Paillier ad explained above. In the following years in numerous projects other similar method called Second Paillier Cryptosystem is used and this calculation simplifies the decryption. This can be implemented in PTC Web services to improve the efficiency. Additionally, there are few suggestions made about the efficiency improvement above. Any of these or all of these can be applied to make the web services more efficient. Most of the suggestions involve pre-computation of the constants in the schemes invented. The pre-computation applied in this project can be applied to more generic constants and have a dll application running continuously on the back ground thread from the server instead of a button from the web server. Lastly, tests failed on 512 and 1024 bit key size encryption. Design can be changed to make it work with these key sizes.
7. References [1] http://cris.joongbu.ac.kr/publication/evoting_implementation-APIEMS2004.pdf Implementation issues in a secure e-voting schemes, Riza Aditya, Byoungcheon Lee, Colin Boyd and Ed Dawson. [2] http://www.euractiv.com/en/egovernment/estonia-country-world-introduce-internet-
voting/article-145735, Estonia first country in the world to introduce internet voting, October 2005. [3] http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~pev5b/writing/academic/thesis/thesis.html Vote Early, Vote Often, and VoteHere: A Security Analysis of VoteHere, Philip E. Varner, May 11, 2001. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography Public-key cryptography. [5] http://www.trustycom.fr/pdf/FoPoSt00.pdf P. Fouque, G. Poupard, J.Stern, Sharing Decryption in the Context of Voting or Lotteries, Financial Cryptography 2000 Proceedings. [6] http://www.captcha.net/ , the Official CAPTCHA web site. [7] http://www.vote.caltech.edu/reports/alv-nag_loyola.pdf R. Michael Alvarez, Jonathan Nagler, The Likely consequences of Internet Voting for Political Representations. [8] P. Paillier, Public-Key Cryptosystems Based on Composite Degree Residuosity Classes, Eurocrypt 99 [9] P. Fouque, G. Poupard, J.Stern, Sharing Decryption in the Context of Voting or Lotteries, Financial Cryptography 2000 Proceedings. [0] I. Damgard, M. Jurik, J. Nielson, A Generalization of Pailliers Public-Key System with Applications to Electronic Voting, Aarhus University, Dept. of Computer Science. [1] A. Shamir, How to Share a Secret, Communications of the ACM 1979
[2] A.J. Menezes, P. C. van Oorschot, and S.A. Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography, CRC Press, 1997. [3] D. Naccache, Double-Speed Safe Prime Generation, Gemplus Card International. [4] M. Wiener, Safe Prime Generation with a Combined Sieve, Cryptographic Clarity. [5] B. Wilson, C. E. Chow, Paillier Threshold Cryptography Web Service Users Guide, University of Colorado Colorado Springs Masters Project, 2006. [16]http://www.cs.rit.edu:8080/ms/static/spr/2005/4/kar1141/report.pdf , Progress on Probabilistic Encryption Schemes, Kert Richardson, July 2006. [17] http://www.cs.umd.edu/~jkatz/THESES/staub.pdf.gz An Analysis of Chaums voter-verifiable election scheme, Julie Ann Staub, 2005 [18] http://www.brics.dk/RS/00/45/BRICS-RS-00-45.pdf Ivan Damgard and Mads J.
Jurik, A Generalization, a Simplification and Some Applications of Pailliers Probabilistic Public-Key System, PKC 2001. [19] http://www.cryptovirology.com/cryptovfiles/newbook/Chapter4.pdf Implementing Perfect Questionable Encryptions, Adam L. Young and Moti M. Yung. [20] http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/cryptobytes/CryptoBytes_January_2002_final.pdf
CryptoBytes, Dan Boneh, Hovav Shacham, Spring 2002. [21] http://www.gemplus.com/smart/rd/publications/pdf/Pai99pai.pdf Public-Key
CryptoSystems Based on Composite Degree Residuosity Classes, Pascal Paillier, 1999 [22] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paillier_cryptosystem , Paillier Crytosystem from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Online E-Voting Prototype With PTC Web Services v1

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Applying MESE processes to Improve Online E-Voting Prototype System with Paillier Threshold Cryptosystem Web Services

Prepared by Hakan Evecek CS701 Dr. Chow Spring 2007

Online E-Voting Prototype System

_______________________________________________________ Dr. C. Edward Chow, Chair

_______________________________________________________ Dr. Richard Weiner

_______________________________________________________ Dr. Xiaobo Zhou

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Poll Station E-Voting

Online E-Voting Prototype System

2. E-Voting System Related Literature

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Where p - 1 and q - 1 have to be replaced by in the fast variant.

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Table 3.1 Pailliers Scheme 1 [21]

Online E-Voting Prototype System

for some 1 . In other words and are not the

Decryption 1. 2. Ciphertext Compute message:

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Figure 4.1 User Login Form

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

another constant parameter below can be pre-computed [21].

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Real Time Computation 128 bit 1.937 2.804 0.329

Change % 128 bit 86% 38% 85%

Table 6.1a 128 bit safe Prime numbers calculation table

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Table 6.1b 128 bit safe Prime numbers calculation.

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Real Time Computation 256 bit 2.133 2.926 0.306

Change % 256 bit 82% 81% 5%

Table 6.2a 256 bit safe Prime numbers calculation table

Encrpytion Parameters Process Period with Key Size 256

Table 6.2b 256 bit safe Prime numbers calculation.

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

Online E-Voting Prototype System

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