It won't work. Until the bot/zombie is solved, online voting is a non-starter, since any election worthy of being stolen can be. It doesn't matter what you do on the server side: you can construct as elaborate and clever and secure an infrastructure as you wish...because on the client side, there is no way to ensure that what the user sees is what's actually happening. (After all: it's not *their* computer any more. Its new owners can, if they wish, cause a vote for candidate A to be sent as a vote for candidate B, and they can prevent the user from knowing that's happened.)
And given that (a) we're now about a decade into the zombie problem (b) no significant effort against them has ever been attempted, let alone completed [1] and (c) the problem is already epidemic and continues to get worse [2] [3], there is no reason whatsoever to think it will be mitigated, let alone solved, in the forseeable future. This doesn't just apply to your proposal: it applies to *all* of them. Unless you can propose and execute a viable plan for solving the zombie problem, then whatever you design/build can be undercut whenever someone chooses to make the effort. (And provided they're not foolishly heavy-handed about it, it's unlikely you would be able to detect this. [4]) ---rsk [1] Botnet "takedowns" are unimportant and irrelevant; their only purpose is to provide a forum for the spokesliars at Microsoft et.al. to trumpet their prowess while a gullible press and public overlook that they *created* this problem. Merely removing C&C networks does nothing to remediate the individual members of the botnets, which are still compromised, still vulnerable, and likely to be conscripted into other botnets before the day is out. [2] We're now seeing portable devices zombie'd: phones, tablets, etc. [3] Estimates of zombie population vary, of course, but clearly, any estimate under 100M should be laughed out of the room. Vint Cerf gave an estimate of 150M just about six years ago, and based on my own work as well as that of others in the anti-spam/abuse area, I thought that was on the high side at the time...but it's most certainly not now. I think the number's probably in the 200-300M range at this point. See: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070125-8707.html for Cerf's comments. [4] See Schneier's insightful and chilling piece on this here: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0404.html#4 That piece should be absolutely mandatory reading for anyone even considering voting systems. It not only provides a method for estimating attacker budgets, but it correctly points out that attackers quite often could tip the balance of an election by manipulating a rather small number of votes -- with a corresponding reduction in the probability that the manipulation will be detected. Note that Schneier wrote that in 2004. If you repeat his analysis with numbers from the 2012 election cycle you'll end up with *much* large attacker budgets. For example, Schneier says that in 2002, Congressional candidates raised over 500M. But https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2012/10/2012-election-spending-will-reach-6.html says that in 2012, they spent about $1.82B. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
