DNA-Based E-Voting System

Introduction

Cloud services are expanding their application range as cloud-computing technology develops at a rapid pace. However, in the implementation and conception of cloud systems, user privacy and data security are key problems. Offline and online, technology has been employed in a variety of ways. As its use grows, particularly in online data storage, security has become one of the most crucial criteria. One of the most secure ways to protect data is through encryption. This method is used for electronic voting (Fujioka et al., 1992), (Hirt & Kazue, 2000), (Katz et al., 2001) and (Rivest, 2001).

Basically, there are two types of cryptography, symmetric cryptography and asymmetric cryptography, which are based on the procedures of converting plaintext data into encrypted data and vice versa. In symmetric cryptography, the sender and receiver use the same key to encrypt and decrypt the information, but in asymmetric cryptography, the encryption and decryption process uses two different keys, one public to encrypt and the other private to decrypt. However, asymmetric algorithms have the disadvantage of being computationally intensive. Therefore, symmetric key cryptography is used in the proposed e-voting system with the aim of reducing the computation while maintaining good data security.

The degree of unpredictability and uncertainty in the production of the cipher text from the plain text is crucial to cryptography processes. As a result, many types of cryptography exist depending on natural phenomena, such as: Modern cryptography is built on complex mathematical problems like prime factorization and matrix manipulation. Elliptical Cryptography is a type of cryptography that makes use of elliptical curve problems. Quantum cryptography makes use of the randomness of electron states within an atom. Furthermore, DNA Cryptography is based on a complex biological process in the field of DNA technology (Adleman, 1994), (Gehani et al., 2003) and (Amin et al., 2006). One gram of DNA has 1021 DNA bases, which equals 108 terabytes of data. As a result, it can store all of the world's data in just a few milligrams (Bornholt et al., 2016).

As the traditional voting, electronic voting system must be conformed to the legal and regulatory framework established by the constitution. Moreover, it should be implemented in a way to minimizes citizen time and effort and eliminates, or at least reduces, the costs and logistics involved with paper ballots. Specifically, it must guarantee the requirements related to cyber security namely confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy and anonymity and should prevent certain forms of fraud. The e-voting system must remain available during the entire election process, identify, and serve voters correctly, especially during a high workload. It should also ensure that the election results are accurate. In addition, electronic voting system should be able to tolerate (some) faulty votes. The system must be able to detect malicious ballots issued by attackers in order to prevent vote manipulation or threats against the servers. Thus, the use of electronic voting systems brings new challenges as mentioned in (Goldsmith & al, 2013)

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  lack of transparency;

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  negative impact on confidence in the process;

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  confusion for the illiterate voters on process;

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  difficulties in auditing results;

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  secrecy of the ballot;

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  security of the voting and counting process;

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  cost of introducing and maintaining the technology over the lifecycle of the equipment;

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  the possibility of losing control over this process to third-party technology providers and the need to recruit specialized IT skilled staff;

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  the additional complexity of the elections and the ability of the EMBs (election management bodies) to manage this situation adequately;

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  repercussions of equipment or system malfunction.