Voter Security Authentication for Online Voting - Essay Example

Enterprise Information Security Risk Assessment of Online Voting Online Voting Identify three most significant information security risks pertinent to online voting system Discuss each in detail; highlight reasons justifying its significance, risk assessment factors, potential mitigation and control measures and risk control strategy plan to demonstrate confidence in effectiveness of suggested mitigation and control measures. Risk, risk assessment, risk mitigation and control, risk control plan strategy References (5) Case Study: Voter Security Authentication for Online Voting Introduction As the world turns into a global village, there are proposals of automating the manual voting processes. There are two e-voting schemes; internet voting and direct recording electronic (DRE). Automation of the voting processes looks palatable in the digital world, improving efficiency and avoiding voting problems like that experienced in the 2000 US elections. Currently, there are various versions of e-voting schemes under trial. It has been argued that e-voting will have the following salutary effects; the disadvantaged communities will have equal voting opportunity which is an antidote for voter apathy, convenience in voting in relation to time, location, and accessibility for the disabled, saving time, and great accuracy. On the other hand, information systems technology experts have raised questions on related e-voting security issues. The process has special challenges that threaten its success to ensure and assure fair elections and embed voter confidence in the system. Voter authentication, integrity, and auditing of elections are some issues of concern with this system. There are systematic approaches of assessing and managing risks in organizations such as OCTAVE. The OCTAVE (Operationally Critical Threat, Asset and Vulnerability Evaluation) approach identifies assets to be protected, the risks that may occur to the assets and how it would be effective to protect them and the cost it would take to protect the assets. Assets that are very crucial and must be protected are those that will be used to determine the winner in the election, this will help win the confidence of the voters. The voting criteria of each election should be able to make sure that the voter anonymity, confidentiality, integrity and audit ability is guaranteed, this will help the election be fair and voters’ security. Octave OCTAVE identified some of the threats that are perceptible to voting systems. The threats that are prone to DRE voting systems are: Trojan horse installed by the DRE vendor, this could be used to create a wholesale compromise of the election, and detecting such threats might be difficult especially if it has been installed using obfuscation techniques. Trojan horse that has been installed by the operating system vendor, this one can also cause a wholesale election compromise. Trade secrecy, this threat prevents examination and adequate testing of software, the countermeasures to such a threat is that it should be provided with open system components and the code inspection and testing which should be provided by the vendor. Lack of standards, it prevents testing of the DRE voting system, and the testing must be done, to do this the system developers should be able to develop the required standards. Lack of configuration oversight and changing of the configurations could introduce new voting compromises which are also a threat to the system, to counter this there should be stronger legal sanctions though the costs of oversights are high. Buggy software, this could lead to the potential for a voter voting more than once and the privacy of the voters may also be lost. There should be better testing and certification of the DRE systems. The best way to be able to counter most of the threats that affect the DRE is to use a voter verified audit trail. The other voting system is the internet voting, and it also has many security threats that are posed to it. Most of the problems arise from the personal computers that individuals would be using and the internet, but apart from these, there are other threats that are caused by the vendors of the Internet Voting systems. Some of them include: Denial of service: this causes disenfranchisement (the revocation of the right to vote of either a person or a certain group of people), and this has ever occurred during the Canadian Internet election. Trojan horse spyware to change or monitor votes: this will lead to theft of votes and there will also be no privacy of the voters. To counter this there should be installation of systems that will create the difficulty of detection, the PCs should be protected from such threats. Automated vote buying: whenever such a threat occurs, the election will be compromised and it is also very difficult to counter such a threat. Insider attack on voting systems: such attacks are very common where most settings are for commercial purposes. These attacks could be minimized by separating duties, enough documenting, there should be control on the physical assets that exist and audits should also be done independently. Virus that is specific to Internet Voting system: this virus comes with a lot of consequences like; theft of votes, the privacy of the voters may also be lost, other voters may be unable to vote, and the elections may also be compromised. Such viruses are difficult to deal with because it will be new and its history will also not be known. Spoofing: this makes the theft of votes easy and its countermeasures can be done anywhere and there should also be a personal identification number that voters should make sure they do not disclose them to other persons (Lauer 2005, pp 181-182). One of the severe threats to online voting arises from: 1. Malicious attacks There are two sources of malicious attacks: I. The malicious insider: is developed in the system and has a direct access to the designed system that will be used during the elections. It is more dangerous because it is built internally. II. The malicious outsider: this is an attacker who tries to access the system from outside the operator’s control. Both of the threats intend to silently attack the electronic voting system and have a big impact on it (Aceto, Shaffer, Smith & Walker 2008, p. 152) Risk assessment The malicious attackers both internal and external create threats to online voting that may be difficult to detect and solve them. Some of the attacks have the ability to destroy a voter’s ballot or change it and there will be no signs that the vote has been manipulated. In such threats encryption (encoding a message so that only the authorized persons can read it) strength becomes worthless because the viruses and the Trojan horse attack the system before the ballot is encrypted by the voter. Most of these attackers use attractive messages that make users fall for them which lead to the loss of confidential data and the user’s windows operating system is exploited and other sensitive programs, and this affect the productivity of the system. These viruses are able to infect many computers on the day that the elections will be carried out and may either change the results or prevent the occurrence of the election. Risk mitigation and control An advantage that such threats have brought to the technology savvy society is that the rate of response of the security experts has increased. Most of the measures that have been taken to counter viruses and threats are: the known viruses are blacklisted so that they do not reach the secured systems. The execution of codes is monitored, this has improved the attackers from reading the information that is being transferred, so the elections cannot be altered A computer emergency response team was launched when there was an attack on the internet that closed about 10% of the 1988 internet. This has since been improving the measures that are taken on keeping the internet safe from fraud and stray Worms. Issues that arise from the attacks that occur is that the security experts should be able to immediately detect a scam and address it before it affects most of the voting system. Every website that is to be used for elections should be able to meet the user standards in order to regard the system of voting efficient, safe and fair to the voters. Risk control strategy Most of these malicious attackers interact with the users and the unsuspecting users are lured into disclosing their confidential information concerning the coming elections. Through these interactions, they give out their PINs, private keys and at times choose unreliable passwords. These can be avoided if the technology experts will educate the medium computer users on such scams, and users too are encouraged to read the warning messages that are brought to them concerning the attackers. The attackers do not only interact with users to infect the system, the companies that design the softwares that will be used during elections should also be able to design for messages that will be used as error messages that are easily understood by all users. The designers of the system should be able to make all efforts to make sure that the system is safe and feasible before allowing it to be used for elections. 2. Unencrypted email. Risk assessment This happens when a voter receives a voter registration form and is requested to fill it out and then email it as an attachment though they do not sign the forms. The form is forwarded to the local election official in the form of a PDF attachment from the voter. After the registration form has been filled and forwarded, the local election official now goes ahead to send the registered voter a blank ballot online then after filling it, the voter sends it back. With such a procedure, it is risky because the voter is made to give up their information to a random ballot. This method exposes the election process to theft. It does not encrypt the information making it potential to attackers and foreign governments. It is also quite difficult to register, receive the ballot then send it on time after filling it. Though it is not wise in today’s technology to send and receive such information without encrypting it. The voter should not be exposed while the security measures are being taken and their votes should also be secured from manipulation. 3.0 Identity Theft and Vote Tampering This is another risk related to online voting. Personal identification information for voter registration is delivered through unencrypted e-mail with the internet being communication system. The risks related to this are; The voters are exposed to risks related to identity theft. This prone to phising attacks. Voted ballots by e-mail or fax are exposed to hackers, foreign governments, or other relayed parties Conclusion Security design in internet voting system is very important. Suitable methodologies including internal and third party assessment of risk management competency, incorporating test process documentation, and compliance to the documentation can be applied. Responsible teams in the development and deployment of internet voting must have superior systems that recognize, assess, and manage emergent threats to the voting system. The voting system requires continuous auditing, multi-prolonged testing for development stages in implementation phases. This is important for the voting system before, during and after the voting system. Forensics offers the best technical solution when applied before and during deployment of the system. This helps identify intruders, inhibit malicious efforts, and delineate any damage from successful intrusion. Such efforts, product and process auditing, thorough unit testing, and forensic analysis should be utilized on hardware-based electronic voting systems. These methodologies will serve best in guarding against and detect security issues related to internet voting systems. Reference List Aceto J. L., Shaffer M. M., Smith III B.E., Walker J.C. (2008). Internet Voting System Security Auditing from System Development through Implementation: Best Practices from Electronic Voting Deployments, John Wiley & Sons, London; U.K. pp. 152 Alberts, C. J. & Dorofee, A. J. (2003). Managing Information Security Risks: The OCTAVE Approach. Upper Saddle Ridge, NJ: Addison-Wesley. Cranor, L. F. (2002). Voting after Florida: No Easy Answers, Ubiquity Mercuri, R. (2002). A Better Ballot Box? IEEE Spectrum, 31, 10, 46-50. Sindre, G. & Opdahl, A. L. (2005). Eliciting Security Requirements with Misuse Cases, Requirements Engineering Journal, 10(1): 34-44. Read More