Tesis doctoral de Víctor Manuel Morales Rocha
In the last few years, electronic means have been used to improve the efficiency of the different processes of an election as well as to automate them. though this automation may have happened in a gradual way, its final purpose is to utilize electronic means for each process: voter registration, voter authentication, vote casting, and tallying and publication of results. The usage of electronic voting systems has been a highly controversial issue, especially concerning security. The difficulty in reaching an expected level of security increases when the internet is used as the voting channel. Even with these difficulties, the internet poses considerable advantages and it is necessary to provide mechanisms that allow this automation in election processes in a secure and reliable way. the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the security aspects related to the different processes of an election, specifically when those processes are carried out by remote electronic means. Several possible security mechanisms are proposed, which focus on the processes of remote voter registration, individual verification, results consolidation, and auditing. Along with its security aspect, each mechanism takes into account transparency in order to verify reliability. Additionally, the ease of use and the implementation are also considered. various remote voting systems are analyzed as well as the corresponding security requirements of those systems. The difficulty in satisfying some of those requirements will be described and particular attention will be paid to systems of remote electronic voting. The main threats that those systems face are analyzed as well. Moreover, a comparative study of the different remote voting systems is carried out and a voting scheme, in order to implement internet voting, is proposed. The different voting cryptographic schemes are also described. Then, advantages and disadvantages of each of them are analyzed in order to determine their feasibility to be used in a real environment. the complexity to shape an electoral roll through remote communication means is also analyzed in this study. A remote voter registration system is proposed in order to constitute an electoral roll in a reliable manner. This system employs cryptographic and biometric mechanisms. an essential part of this thesis is the potential for independent voter verification. After analyzing several proposals, two schemes that include mechanisms to allow voter verification are proposed, resulting in the possibility of verifying that votes are properly included in the election results. additionally, a method for consolidating results is presented. This method can be used in remote electronic voting. However, it can also be used in elections that use different voting channels. In order to protect the voting results generated through each voting channel, cryptographic techniques are employed. The voting results are also protected during their transference to the consolidation server. finally, several audit process for electronic voting systems are described. An audit mechanism is proposed that allows verification that a remote electronic voting system is working properly; it focuses on the detection of illegitimate votes. This mechanism is based on cryptographic techniques to protect the votes once they have been received by the voting server.
Datos académicos de la tesis doctoral «Seguridad en los procesos de voto electronico remoto:registro,votacion,consolidacion de resultados y auditoria«
- Título de la tesis: Seguridad en los procesos de voto electronico remoto:registro,votacion,consolidacion de resultados y auditoria
- Autor: Víctor Manuel Morales Rocha
- Universidad: Politécnica de catalunya
- Fecha de lectura de la tesis: 13/03/2009
Dirección y tribunal
- Director de la tesis
- Miguel Soriano Ibáñez
- Tribunal
- Presidente del tribunal: josep rafael Pegueroles vallés
- iñaki Goirizelaia ordorika (vocal)
- José María Sierra camara (vocal)
- cristina Ana Gómez de la oliva (vocal)