Platform-Independent Secure Blockchain-Based Voting System

Bin Yu, Joseph K. Liu, Amin Sakzad, Surya Nepal, Ron Steinfeld, Paul Rimba, Man Ho Au

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

99 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Cryptographic techniques are employed to ensure the security of voting systems in order to increase its wide adoption. However, in such electronic voting systems, the public bulletin board that is hosted by the third party for publishing and auditing the voting results should be trusted by all participants. Recently a number of blockchain-based solutions have been proposed to address this issue. However, these systems are impractical to use due to the limitations on the voter and candidate numbers supported, and their security framework, which highly depends on the underlying blockchain protocol and suffers from potential attacks (e.g., force-abstention attacks). To deal with two aforementioned issues, we propose a practical platform-independent secure and verifiable voting system that can be deployed on any blockchain that supports an execution of a smart contract. Verifiability is inherently provided by the underlying blockchain platform, whereas cryptographic techniques like Paillier encryption, proof-of-knowledge, and linkable ring signature are employed to provide a framework for system security and user-privacy that are independent from the security and privacy features of the blockchain platform. We analyse the correctness and coercion-resistance of our proposed voting system. We employ Hyperledger Fabric to deploy our voting system and analyse the performance of our deployed scheme numerically.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInformation Security - 21st International Conference, ISC 2018, Proceedings
EditorsLiqun Chen, Mark Manulis, Steve Schneider
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages369-386
Number of pages18
ISBN (Print)9783319991351
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018
Event21st Information Security Conference, ISC 2018 - Guildford, United Kingdom
Duration: 9 Sept 201812 Sept 2018

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11060 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference21st Information Security Conference, ISC 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityGuildford
Period9/09/1812/09/18

Keywords

  • Blockchain
  • Evoting
  • Homomorphic encryption
  • Ring signature

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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