Paper 2017/081

Estonian Voting Verification Mechanism Revisited Again

Ivo Kubjas and Tiit Pikma and Jan Willemson

Abstract

Recently, Muş, Kiraz, Cenk and Sertkaya proposed an improvement over the present Estonian Internet voting vote verification scheme. This paper points to the weaknesses and questionable design choices of the new scheme. We show that the scheme does not fix the vote privacy issue it claims to. It also introduces a way for a malicious voting application to manipulate the vote without being detected by the verification mechanism, hence breaking the cast-as-intended property. In addition, the proposal would seriously harm usability of the Estonian vote verification scheme.

Note: Added an additional side channel attack.