Design and Implementation of a Software-Based Advance Electronic Voting Machine Using Automatic Registration and Fingerprint Identification

In democratic countries, free and fair elections are required to quantify the populace's sentiments to form a government of representatives. It is challenging to maneuver due to the procedural variation from country to country and complexity. As paper-based electoral systems are slow and prone to error that take hours and ample manpower to announce the results, thus a secure efficient electoral system is always preferred. In this paper, we have proposed a secure implementation of auto-registration fingerprint identification-based electronic voting systems to overcome the aspect of accuracy and transparency. We have included a novel feature of automated registration to authenticate the user through identity before the vote casting. Moreover, credentials of voters are collected in a database including fingerprints, and communication of encrypted data between server and machine with secured Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Additionally, the voter can cast their votes through a touch screen Graphical User Interface (GUI), and once the voting time end, the screen can automatically disappear by authorizing admin to print Form-45. Conclusively, the proposed system count votes automatically that is much faster and accurate than the traditional voting techniques. Moreover, the results will be available to the general public in 1-2 hours which ensures fair elections.

Secure, Accurate, and Practical Narrow-Band Ranging System

Relay attacks pose a serious security threat to wireless systems, such as, contactless payment systems, keyless entry systems, or smart access control systems. Distance bounding protocols, which allow an entity to not only authenticate another entity but also determine whether it is physically close by, effectively mitigate relay attacks. However, secure implementation of distance bounding protocols, especially of the time critical challenge-response phase, has been a challenging task. In this paper, we design and implement a secure and accurate distance bounding protocol based on Narrow-Band signals, such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), to particularly mitigate relay attacks. Narrow-Band ranging, specifically, phase-based ranging, enables accurate distance measurement, but it is vulnerable to phase rollover attacks. In our solution, we mitigate phase rollover attacks by also measuring time-of-flight (ToF) to detect the delay introduced by such attacks. Therefore, our protocol effectively combines the best of both worlds: phase-based ranging for accuracy and time-of-flight (ToF) measurement for security. To demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of our solution, we prototype it on NXP KW36 BLE chips and evaluate its performance and relay attack resistance. The obtained precision and accuracy of the presented ranging solution are 2.5 cm and 30 cm, respectively, in wireless measurements.

Practical generation of common random strings for secure multiparty computations over the Internet

It is known that most of the interesting multiparty cryptographic tasks cannot be implemented securely without trusted setup in a general concurrent network environment like the Internet. We need an appropriate trusted third party to solve this problem. An important trusted setup is a public random string shared by the parties. We present a practical n-bit coin toss protocol for provably secure implementation of such setup. Our idea is inviting external peers into the execution of the protocol to establish an honest majority among the parties. We guarantee security in the presence of an unconditional, static, malicious adversary. Additionally, we present an original practical idea of using live public radio broadcast channels for the generation of common physical random source.

Blockchain-Enabled Demand Response Scheme with Individualized Incentive Pricing Mode

Demand response (DR) can offer a wide range of advantages for electrical systems by facilitating the interaction and balance between supply and demand. However, DR always requires a central agent, giving rise to issues of security and trust. Besides this, differences in user response cost characteristics are not taken into consideration during incentive pricing, which would affect the equal participation of users in DR and increase the costs borne by the electricity retail company. In this paper, a blockchain-enabled DR scheme with an individualized incentive pricing mode is proposed. First, a blockchain-enabled DR framework is proposed to promote the secure implementation of DR. Next, a dual-incentive mechanism is designed to successfully implement the blockchain to DR, which consists of a profit-based and a contribution-based model. An individualized incentive pricing mode is adopted in the profit-based model to decrease the imbalance in response frequency of users and reduce the costs borne by the electricity retail company. Then, the Stackelberg game model is constructed and Differential Evolution (DE) is used to produce equilibrium optimal individualized incentive prices. Finally, case studies are conducted. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can reduce the cost borne by the electricity retail company and decrease the imbalance among users in response frequency.