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Non Repudiation for Remote Voting System

Saira Yousuf, Malik Sikandar Hayat Khiyal, Aihab Khan, Imran Sohail

Abstract— Remote voting is currently one of the most powerfully debated subjects in information communication
technology for free and fair online elections. The main purpose of this research paper is to assure Non Repudiation
of casted vote that is necessary in specific voting scenario. It has been designed so the institution holding the
election must have proof of pointing out voters who have casted a vote. Non repudiation provides evidence that
protect against any attempt by the voter to falsely deny having casted the vote. The proposed solution use digital
signatures to ensure the non repudiation of the vote. The voter cast his vote by digitally signing it. The system after
receiving the vote verifies authenticity of voter and safe the vote as a proof. The vote is than counted in the final
tally. Only registered voter can participate in the internet voting system. The result from the system indicates the
execution time and efficiency of the signatures generation using different hash functions. The quantitative analysis
and comparison concludes that the signature with hash function MD4 takes least execution time and memory as
compare to other signature generation algorithms. The developed system not only provides the proof of the casted
vote but can also challenge the authenticity of voter.

Index Terms — Authenticity, Digital Signature, Non Repudiation, Remote Voting.

1. INTRODUCTION

T
he purpose of this research paper is to ensure
non-repudiation of casted vote in remote
voting system.Non-repudiation of Origin
(NRO) provides the recipient with evidence of
origin (EOO) of the message which protect against
any attempt by the originator to falsely deny having
send the message[1].The participants require
assurance and protection from each other, rather than
from an external hostile agent. For this purpose, a
digital signature is an important security mechanism
for generating non-repudiation evidence and is
receiving legal recognition [2].In electronic voting
————————————————
 Saira Yousuf is under graduate student of Department of
Software Engineering, Fatima Jinnah Women University The
Mall, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
 Malik Sikandar Hayat Khayal is Professor and Chairman of
Department of Computer Science Fatima Jinnah Women
University The Mall, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
 Aihab Khan is with the Department of Software Engineering,
Fatima Jinnah Women University The Mall, Rawalpindi,
Pakistan
 Imran Sohail is Assistant Professor and faculty of the
Department of Software Engineering, Fatima Jinnah Women
University The Mall, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
system the chances of the fraud, vote corruption and
fake voter are very high. It is required to develop a
system that not only provides the proof of the casted
vote but also the authenticity of voter.
Keeping this thing in view, non-repudiation is seen in
legal setting in which the origin and authenticity of a
vote can be challenged using digital signatures
[3].For non repudiability of vote, the proposed
system makes the voter cast his vote by digitally
signing it The receiver after receiving the vote
verifies authenticity of voter and safe the signature
and vote as a proof. The vote is than counted in the
final tally.
The main objectives and contributions to this
research are to develop a system that uses secure and
efficient signature generation technique for non
repudiation in remote voting. Also, to measure the
execution time and memory of the signatures using
different hash functions and to provide the
comparative quantitative analysis of the proposed
model with existing models.
Section 1 provides the brief introduction of the
project. Section 2 includes the related work which is
done so far. Section 3 gives the description of the
proposed system. Section 4 gives the results obtain
from the system with the help of tables and graphs
and comparison of proposed system with the existing

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system. Section 5 gives conclusion of the system and
the future work that can be done in this area. Section
6 gives references.
2. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK
Bo Meng et al. [ 4 ] , proposed a fair non repudiation
protocol for electronic commerce and mailing. The
proposed protocol uses hash value of cipher text and
plain text message instead of plain text itself in non
repudiation token, which solves transmitting large
amount of data problem and improves confidentiality
of msg. The purpose of non repudiation service in
this paper is to generate, collect and maintain the
evidence on the events and actions and to protect the
parties involved in a transaction against the other
party denying that a particular event took place. This
paper uses tokens and the involvement of trusted
third party for the non repudiation of origin and
receipt.
Damian et al. [5] deliver a new secured protocol for
medium scale e voting, based on Cetinkaya’s Dyna
Vote solution. The main features of this protocol are
to improve security requirements and assure non
repudiation of voter that is necessary in specific
voting scenario. The protocol is divided into three
phases: Obtaining Id’s from authorities to
communicate with other instances, obtaining the
voting ballot and sending vote and counting votes
and publishing results. In the proposed system, the
solution for the safe medium scale e voting protocol
is described. It consists of new mechanism that
ensures uncoercibility and non repudiation of voting.
Hao Wang et al. [6] propose an e mail protocol that
assures non repudiability, which means that if the e
mail is successfully sent, the sender cannot deny of
sending the mail and the recipient cannot deny of
receiving it. The protocol uses an efficient RSA based
convertible signature with non interactive zero
knowledge proof method which is the signature
scheme to elaborate an efficient non repudiable e
mail protocol. The proposed model is divided in to
Pre transfer registration process, Main protocol,
Recover sub protocol and Abort sub protocol. The
paper also provides the assurance of efficiency,
fairness, timeliness and confidentiality. It presents a
new non repudiable protocol with improved RSA.
Fauzia Qayyum[7] provides integrity for remote
voting system. After casting a vote a voter will be
77
ensured that his/her vote is not being altered or
modify. The proposed solution uses simple hash
functions to ensure integrity of ballot. First of all the
key distribution center distributes private keys. The
voter selects the candidate of his own choice. All
information including voter_cnic, candidate_cnic and
Area_id forms vote contents. Hash is produced on
vote contents to digest vote. The digested vote is
encrypted using shared key. The original vote
contents and the encrypted vote are concatenated and
send over a network. On receiver site, the encrypted
vote is than decrypted which give the hash of the vote
contents. The original vote contents are once again
hashed using hash function. The hashes obtained after
decryption and the hash produced latter are
compared. If both of them are equal, then it shows
that the vote is not altered or modified in between.
The vote contents are saved in database and counted
in the final tally.
3. PROPOSED TECHNIQUE
The proposed system provides the non repudiation in
remote voting system. After casting the vote, the
voter cannot deny having casted the vote. To achieve
non repudiability, digital signatures are used to ensure
the origin of casted vote and authenticity of voter.
Only the registered voter can participate in internet
voting system and can cast the vote.
3.1. PROPOSED MODEL
Figure 1 shows the proposed model for the non
repudiation of vote and the authenticity of voter in
remote voting system. The voter enters CNIC and
family number to login to the system. Using private
key, he generate signature on CNIC. The system
verifies the received signature to ensure authenticity
of voter. The voter after casting ballot, re generate
signature on ballot contents. After verification of
signature, the signature and ballot contents are stored
in database as a proof of casted vote which could not
be reputed.
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Figure 1: Proposed Model of Non Repudiation for Remote Voting System
3.2. PROPOSED ALGORITHM
The proposed algorithm is given as follows.
STEP 1: (KEY DISTRIBUTION)
First, the key distribution center through the secure
channel generates the private key for the system to
generate signature and public key to verify it.
Step 2: The voter enters his CNIC.
Step 3: Digital Signature is produced on voter’s
CNIC (voters own personal info), using private key.
Step 4: The original voter’s CNIC and the signature
produced in step 3 are now concatenated
(attached).This gives the digitally signed content,
which is then sent over a network.
Step 5: Original CNIC and the signature are now
separated on the receiver side (system).
Step 6: The original CNIC which was received in
step 5, are once again signed by the same signature
algorithm with which the voter signed the CNIC in
step 3.
Step 7: The signature produced in step 3 and the
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signature received in step 6 are compared and
verified by system public key. If both are equal, this
means that the voter is authentic as the signatures
produced on the voter’s own personal CNIC are
same, so authenticity of voter achieved.
Step 8: The voter then cast his ballot and digitally
signs the ballot contents. The signature after
verification would be stored in database as a proof so
that later on the voter cannot deny the casted vote, so
non repudiability is also achieved.
The analysis of the proposed system gives the
following results.
4. RESULTS
Openssl_sign() is the signature produced using
different hash functions on the vote content of length
37 and the signature generation time is calculated
using the time functions as shown in table 1 and
figure 2.
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Signature Hash Length Signature The comparison shows that the signature with hash
Function of Generation function MD2, MD4 and MD5 take least memory as
Contents Time(seconds) compare to other hash functions used. The strengths
SHA1 37 0.16601 and weaknesses of proposed system with the existing
MD2 37 0.00585 systems are compared and shown in table 3.
Openssl_sign()
MD4 37 0.00345 Large Complexity Non
MD5 37 0.00347 Scale Repudiation
A fair non
Table 1: Comparison of signature generation time repudiation Yes High Yes
protocol[4]
0.02
Voter non
0.015 repudiation
Time 

oriented
0.01 scheme for Yes High Yes
medium
0.005 scale e -
voting
0 protocol[5]
SHA1 MD2 MD4 MD5 A non
Hash Functions  repudiable
protocol for
Figure 2: Comparison of signature generation secure Yes High Yes
time w.r.t hash functions messaging[6]

The comparison shows that the signature using the Integrity for
hash function MD4 takes least time and is most remote Yes Low No
efficient among all signature generation algorithms. voting
The memory occupied by the signatures is shown system[7]
table 2 and figure 3. Proposed
non Yes Low Yes
Signature Hash Length of Memory repudiation
Function signature occupied(bits) system.
SHA1 40 156 Table 3: Comparison of proposed non
MD2 32 128 repudiation system with existing system
Openssl_sign()
MD4 32 128
The comparison shows that the existing systems were
MD5 32 128 developed for the large scale usage but their
Table 2: Comparison of memory occupied by complexity level is very high. The proposed system
signatures can work on large scale and ensures non repudiation.
The complexity level of the system is also very low.
200
5. CONCLUSION
Memory Occupied 

150
The paper proposes a system that ensures non-
100 repudiation in electronic voting system. This paper
focuses on two basic aspects of non- repudiation
50 .First to ensure non repudiability of vote and second
0 to ensure voter’s authenticity. The digital signatures
SHA 1 MD2 MD4 MD5 generated on vote contents provide evidence of the
casted vote, which could not be reputed. The
Hash Functions  quantitative analysis of the implemented techniques
helped to generalize the results. The results from the
Figure 3: Comparison of memory occupied by system conclude that the signature with hash function
signatures w.r.t hash functions. MD4 is better than the other signature algorithms, as
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its execution time and memory usage is less as
compare to other signatures. The system has low
complexity having flexible voting scheme as
compare to the existing systems. The results
produced support each other so the system is also
validated. To achieve non repudiation of the casted
data, the approach of digital signatures with hash
functions is quite simple as compare to other lengthy
techniques of generation of signatures. Future work is
required for the Non-repudiation of Receipt (NRR) as
well, to provide the originator with evidence of
Receipt (EOR) of the vote which protect against any
attempt by the receiver to falsely deny having
received the vote.
6. REFERENCES
[1]: J.Zhou, K.Y.Lam, “Securing Digital Signatures for Non-
Repudiation”, Computer Communication 22(1999), pp 710-716,
1999.
[2]:L.Hollar, A.Asay,”Legal Recognition of Digital Signatures”,
IEEE micro16(3)(1996), pp 44-45, 1996.
[3] :http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Repudiation (accessed
April 2011).
[4] Bo meng, Jianying Zhou, D. Gollman, “A Fair Non
Repudiation Protocol”, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy,
pp 68-73, 2007.
International Journals and Conference proceedings. He has
supervised three PhD and more than one hundred and thirty
research projects at graduate and postgraduate level. He is
member of SIAM, ACM, Informing Science Institute,
IACSIT. He is associate editor of IJCTE and Co editor of
the journals JATIT and International Journal of Reviews in
Computing. He is reviewer of the journals, IJCSIT, JIISIT,
IJCEE and CEE of Elsevier.
Aihab Khan is the faculty member of the Department of
Software Engineering in Fatima Jinnah Women University
the Mall, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Imran Sohail is the Assistant Professor, Web Administrator
and the faculty of the Department of Software Engineering
in Fatima Jinnah Women University the Mall, Rawalpindi,
Pakistan. He did M.S in Internet Systems from BTH
Sweden and worked as a web developer in Ericson
Stockholm, Sweden. He is an associated author of
publications: Network Security and DDoS (ISBN 978-3-
8383-7009-5), Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Practiced in Organization and Effectiveness of Intrusion
Prevention System (IOS) in Fast Networks. He has vast
experience of programming and has developed number of
applications.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[5] Damian Rusinek and Bogdan Ksiezopolski, “Voter Non

Repudiation Oriented Scheme for the Medium Scale E voting
Protocol”, Proceedings of the International Multi conference on
Computer Science and Information Technology, pp 325-330, 2007.

[6] Hao Wang, Yuyi Ou, Jie Ling, Xiaotao He, Lu Liang, Xiang
Xu, "A Non-repudiable Protocol for Secure Messaging", IFIP
International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing
Workshops, pp 490-494, 2007.

[7] Fauzia Qayyum,” Integrity for Remote Voting System”, Thesis

submitted in department of software engineering, Fatima Jinnah
Women University, 2008.

Bibliography

Saira Yousuf is the under graduate student of Department

of Software Engineering in Fatima Jinnah Women
University the Mall, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Dr. M. Sikandar Hayat Khiyal born at Khushab, Pakistan.

He is Chairman Dept. Computer Sciences and Software
Engineering in Fatima Jinnah Women University Pakistan.
He Served in Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission for 25
years and involved in different research and development
program of the PAEC. He developed software of
underground flow and advanced fluid dynamic techniques.
He was also involved at teaching in Computer Training
Centre, PAEC and International Islamic University. His
area of interest is Numerical Analysis of Algorithm, Theory
of Automata and Theory of Computation. He has more than
hundred research publications published in National and