Voting system design pitfalls: Vulnerability analysis and exploitation of a model platform

Abstract

Homomorphic encryption may be seen as a substantial potential boon to voting systems. If properly used, it allows provably anonymous elections to take place. However, when poorly constructed, using weak cryptographic primitives results in highly vulnerable systems that are prone to attacks. This paper details one attack done against a model of an election system as part of a security competition, where a hardware Trojan has weakened its security. We designed a proof of concept exploit and implemented it on an FPGA, demonstrating weaknesses in the system regardless of the existence of this Trojan.