RAPID: Secure Bulletin Boards and Absentee Voting in Real-World Independently-Verifiable Elections

马里兰州塔科马帕克市在2009年11月举行了第一次可独立核实的无记名投票公开选举，创造了选举历史。世界上任何地方的选民第一次可以使用Scantigity投票系统独立审计无记名投票的政府选举。该项目对Takoma Park在2009年使用的系统的两个方面进行了改进。首先，它提供了一种缺席投票协议--远程诚信，使缺席选民能够受益于制度--S的可验证性属性。该协议设计得足够简单，可以在现实世界的公共选举中使用。协议属性是使用密码证明技术严格定义和证明的。其次，它通过使用基于复合组件的操作系统作为安全基础，提高了选举网站的安全性。该网站通过动态减少不同客户端对彼此的暴露来适应故障和妥协，从而防止数据损坏和资源匮乏。这项研究提供了一种用于选举的安全公告牌的详细设计，它超越了对所使用的密码协议的抽象描述，减少了公告牌的安全漏洞。特别是，它使公告牌不太容易受到恶意客户更改发布的数字选举审计跟踪或发动大规模拒绝服务攻击的企图的影响。这项研究迫在眉睫，因为马里兰州塔科马帕克市的选举委员会和市议会正在考虑将其用于2011年11月的市政选举。

The City of Takoma Park, MD made election history in November 2009 by holding the first independently-verifiable secret-ballot public election. Voters could, for the first time anywhere in the world, independently audit a secret-ballot governmental election using the Scantegrity voting system. This project improves on two aspects of the system used by Takoma Park in 2009. First, it provides an absentee voting protocol, Remotegrity, which enables absentee voters to benefit from the system?s verifiability properties. The protocol is designed to be simple enough for use in a real-world public election. Protocol properties are defined and proven rigorously, using the techniques of cryptographic proofs. Second, it improves upon the security of the election website by using the Composite component-based OS for a secure foundation. The website adapts to faults and compromises by dynamically decreasing the exposure of different clients to each other, thus preventing data corruption and resource starvation. The research provides a detailed design of a secure bulletin board for elections that goes beyond an abstract description of the cryptographic protocols used, decreasing the security vulnerabilities of the bulletin board. In particular, it makes the bulletin board less vulnerable to attempts by malicious clients to change the posted digital election audit trail or to launch massive denial-of-service attacks. The research is urgent because it is being considered for use in the November 2011 municipal election of the City of Takoma Park, MD, by its Board of Elections and City Council.