Internet Votinga menace to society?

Jan Meijer

POWER

You exercise your right to vote...• If you are elligable• Anonymous• In private, it’s YOUR vote, leave your

consultant at home• to elect well defined subject(s)

According to a well defined process

Water boards & RIES

• 2003, Water board Rijnland, Rijnland Internet Election System

• 1.2 million voters• 300k for Internet voting

Postal + Internet

RIES: The ”Robers” protocol

• Herman Robers. Electronic elections employing DES smartcards. Master's thesis, Delft University of Technology, December 1998. http://www.iscit.surfnet.nl/team/Herman/election.ps.

• http://www.cs.ru.nl/W.Pieters/compsac2005.pdf

• Virtual ballot using DES

3 phase system

• Phase 1: Prepare. – Distribute pseudo Id and voter secret to each

voter• Phase 2: Voting window• Phase 3: Tally

Network paradigmclient (voter) server (polling station)network (internet)process stage

vote process

processingverification

vote contact

vote materials

vote result

vote confirmation

unsecured

secured

Security is a mindset

Know your goal: won the battle..

Know your risks

shit will happen

Know when it’s good enough...

System characteristics

• Peak performance 2004: 23 voters/s over SSL• Holistic approach• Compartimentalized security• Layered security• Sustain multiple component failure• BCP, common sense• ”Lazy running”• Dirt cheap

Not in outer space

• You scavenge...• A network• Existing services (DNS, RPS, NTP, ...)• SURFnet-CERT• ...

Architecture overview

Our dashboard

It worked…Resource usageRijnland elections

No peak?

vote server 1, 2006 vote server 2, 2006

vote server 1, Dommelvote server 1, Rijnland

So, a menace to society?

ONLY IF DONE BADLY

Easiest to monitor

10.000 polling stations(Nigeria, UK, NL?)

or

1 station

/me?

• Voting by the people, for the people: it’s democracy stupid!

• Internet age opportunity• Publicly owned system, open source• End commercial incompetence• Power to the people!

State of our eVoting systems is a professional disgrace!

Still not convinced?http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/17/sarasota_county_network_breached/

“Slammer turns Florida election result into worm food”

…The county server was breached on the first day of early voting in the 2006 election, which included a now-disputed race for a seat in the US House of Representatives. The attack code was a variant of the infamous Slammer worm that penetrated the county's server, which unbelievably, was missing five years worth of security patches…