Constructing credential-based E-voting systems from offline E-coin protocols

• Published in: Journal of network and computer applications 2014-06, Vol.42, p.39-44
• Main Authors: Mateu, Víctor, Sebé, Francesc, Valls, Magda
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Algorithmics. Computability. Computer arithmetics; Applied sciences; Computer science; control theory; systems; Cryptography; E-coin; E-voting; Exact sciences and technology; Information, signal and communications theory; Signal and communications theory; Telecommunications and information theory; Theoretical computing
• ISSN: 1084-8045; 1095-8592
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jnca.2014.03.009

Mu and Varadharajan proposed a remote voting paradigm in which participants receive a blindly signed voting credential that permits them to cast a vote anonymously. If some participant tries to cheat by submitting more than one vote, her anonymity will be lifted. In the last years, several proposals following this paradigm, including Mu and Varadharajan׳s, have been shown to be cryptographically weak. In this paper we first show that a recent proposal by Baseri et al. is also weak. After that, we give a general construction that, employing an offline e-coin protocol as a building block, provides an anonymous voting system following the aforementioned paradigm. •We present a construction for building an e-voting system taking an offline e-coin protocol as a building block.•We show that the e-voting system proposed by Baseri et al. is unsecure.•We prove that the security of our construction depends on the security of the underlying e-coin system.•We provide a secure solution to Mu and Varadharajan׳s variant of the blind signature-based e-voting paradigm.