VoteVeritas is an advanced, secure, and transparent voting platform designed to ensure the integrity of elections in the digital age. By leveraging cutting-edge Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and blockchain-inspired technology, VoteVeritas guarantees that each vote is cast, recorded, and counted with the utmost accuracy and confidentiality.
- PKI-Backed Voter Authentication: Ensures that every voter is verified through unique, trusted digital certificates, preventing voter fraud and impersonation.
- Tamper-Proof Voting Records: Leveraging cryptographic methods to provide immutable records, ensuring no vote can be altered after submission.
- Complete Anonymity: VoteVeritas decouples voter identities from their votes, ensuring total privacy while allowing the system to track voting legitimacy.
- End-to-end Transparency: Real-time audits and verifiable ballots allow voters, election officials, and third-party auditors to review the system's integrity without compromising privacy.
- Resilient Against Attacks: Built-in redundancy, encryption, and security measures protect the voting process from cyberattacks, tampering, and system failures.
- User-Friendly Interface: Designed for easy access and use, allowing voters and election officials to navigate the platform with minimal technical expertise.
At VoteVeritas, we aim to restore trust in the voting process by providing a robust, transparent, and tamper-proof solution for democratic elections. VoteVeritas is the future of secure, digital voting for local, state, or national elections.
- The Election Authority is the trusted entity (e.g., a state or club) responsible for creating and managing the root certificate used to sign voter certificates.
- It issues certificates to Voter Registrars and ensures the integrity of the voting block.
- Certificates issued by the Election Authority are trusted by all entities in the system.
- The Voter Registrar is the election official responsible for creating and issuing certificates for individual voters.
- Each Voter Registrar holds a certificate signed by the Election Authority, ensuring their trustworthiness.
- Voter certificates are valid for a set period, typically 4 years, and contain identifying information such as the voter's GUID or serial number.
- Each voter is assigned a unique Voter Certificate issued by the Voter Registrar.
- This certificate includes identifying information and is valid for a set period, such as 4 years.
- The Voter Certificate enables the voter to participate in the election and ensures they can vote only once.
- A Ballot Certificate is generated when a voter casts their vote.
- The Ballot Certificate contains a public/private key pair used to sign the vote (the Eballot). This ensures that the ballot has not been tampered with.
- No identifying information about the voter is stored in the Ballot Certificate, preserving voter anonymity.
- Once the voter has voted, a record is stored in a database to prevent multiple voting.
- An Eballot is a digital ballot signed with the voter’s Ballot Certificate.
- It contains the Ballot Certificate and is designed to be verifiable by anyone using standard PKI tools to confirm its integrity.
- Each Eballot has a unique ID and is stored in a database for future reference.
- The Eballot is printed out for the voter to keep as a record of their vote.
- While the Eballot Certificate expires after the election deadline, the validity of the Eballot can still be checked indefinitely to ensure that the ballot hasn't been altered.
- The system uses a database to store all relevant information, including:
- Records of Voter Certificates and Ballot Certificates.
- A flag indicating whether a voter has cast their vote (to prevent duplicate voting).
- Eballots are stored securely with their unique IDs for later retrieval and verification.
- Voter Anonymity: Voter information is not linked to the ballot, ensuring that no one can trace the vote back to the individual.
- Tamper Detection: Each Eballot is signed using the Ballot Certificate, ensuring that any alterations to the ballot can be detected.
- Single Vote Enforcement: Once a voter casts their vote, their status is recorded in the database to prevent multiple votes.
- Expiration of Certificates: Both Voter and Eballot Certificates expire after their designated periods, enhancing security while preserving the ability to validate votes in the future.
- End-to-End Encryption: All sensitive information, including voter data and ballots, is encrypted using PKI.
- .NET 6.0 or later
- Database System: The database system used for storing voters, ballots, and records can be SQL Server, MySQL, or any database supporting encryption and secure storage.
- Messaging system. Currently, NATS is being used because of its lightweight nature and security
- Voter registration code that has their private key encrypted on it. However, messages will be abstracted as much as possible.
- The Election Authority generates a root certificate.
- Voter Registrars are issued certificates by the Election Authority.
- Voter certificates are issued by Voter Registrars for all eligible voters.
- Voters authenticate with their Voter Certificate.
- Upon voting, a Ballot Certificate is generated.
- The Eballot is signed with the private key of the Ballot Certificate and submitted.
- The system records that the voter has cast their vote to prevent multiple voting.
- After submission, anyone can validate the eballot by using PKI tools to check the integrity of the signature and confirm that the eballot has not been altered.
- The system stores all eballots and allows future validation using the unique ID associated with each ballot.
- Clone the repository:
git clone <repository-url> cd trusted-voting-system
The trusted voting system described has several robust security features using PKI to ensure the integrity of votes. However, there are still some potential security concerns to address:
- Risk: If a voter's certificate is compromised (e.g., through phishing, malware, or hacking), an attacker could impersonate the voter and cast a fraudulent vote.
- Mitigation: Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure additional security when voters authenticate with their voter certificates.
- Risk: Election officials, such as the Election Authority or Voter Registrar, could potentially issue fraudulent certificates or manipulate voting records. Insiders could issue extra voter certificates or alter database records.
- Mitigation: Implement role-based access control (RBAC) and maintain strict audit logs. Monitoring and logging every action related to certificate issuance can mitigate insider threats.
- Risk: Even though the system separates ballots from voter identities, metadata (e.g., voting times, voter registration logs) could theoretically allow a vote to be traced back to a voter.
- Mitigation: Randomize vote casting times and reduce data retention to minimize the risk of de-anonymizing voters. Homomorphic encryption could further protect voter anonymity.
- Risk: If the process of generating the Ballot Certificate at the time of voting is compromised (e.g., by weak or predictable keys), ballots could be vulnerable to tampering.
- Mitigation: Use strong cryptographic algorithms (e.g., RSA, ECC) with sufficient key lengths (2048-bit RSA or 256-bit ECC). Employ hardware security modules (HSMs) to securely generate and store keys.
- Risk: An attacker could capture and resend a previously submitted eballot, potentially altering it or casting multiple votes.
- Mitigation: Ensure the system uses cryptographic nonces and unique identifiers for each ballot to detect replay attacks. Store votes securely to prevent duplicate submissions.
- Risk: The database storing eballots, voter participation records, and Ballot Certificates could be a target for attackers. If compromised, attackers could tamper with or delete election records.
- Mitigation: Encrypt the database at rest and in transit. Enforce access controls and use frequent backups. Integrity checks or blockchain can ensure record accuracy and detect tampering.
- Risk: A DoS attack could overwhelm the system with traffic or exploit vulnerabilities, disrupting the voting process.
- Mitigation: Use rate-limiting, load balancing, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation techniques to maintain availability during election periods.
- Risk: Voter or Ballot Certificates could expire prematurely, unintentionally preventing legitimate voters from casting their votes or invalidating valid votes.
- Mitigation: Use accurate time synchronization for certificates and notify voters of expiration dates. Ensure election timelines are carefully managed to avoid issues with certificate expiration.
- Risk: The PKI system itself is a single point of failure. If the Election Authority's root certificate is compromised, the entire system could be jeopardized.
- Mitigation: The root certificate and private key should be stored securely using hardware security modules (HSMs). Continuous monitoring of the Election Authority’s infrastructure is essential to detect any signs of tampering.
- Risk: If attackers gain access to the eballot storage database, they could modify or delete submitted ballots, effectively altering election results.
- Mitigation: Implement strong encryption and digital signatures for eballots. Use auditing and checks, potentially leveraging blockchain, to ensure ballots cannot be altered once submitted.
- Risk: Attackers could fraudulently register multiple fake voters or duplicate identities, allowing them to cast extra votes.
- Mitigation: Implement strong identity verification for voter registration, with an audit trail for all registration activities. Using biometric or MFA methods for registration can help ensure valid identities.
- Risk: If voting machines or devices used to generate Ballot Certificates are physically compromised, attackers could alter software or generate weak keys.
- Mitigation: Secure voting machines physically, and digitally sign and verify software updates to prevent tampering.
- Implement multi-factor authentication for voters and officials.
- Employ strict auditing for certificate issuance and voting activities.
- Randomize metadata to obscure voter identity.
- Use tamper-proof cryptographic protocols such as blockchain for audit trails.
- Ensure database encryption and enforce access controls.
- Secure the PKI infrastructure by using HSMs and