Secure Electronic Voting Using a Hybrid Cryptosystem and Steganography

Abstract

Conventional voting techniques have been employed over the years in most elections. However, each of these techniques has attendant short comings. The existing conventional voting systems have been subjected to gross abuse and irregularities. Electronic voting (e-voting) which is emerging as an alternative to these conventional voting systems, though highly promising, is not also totally free of flaws; information security issues bordering on privacy, integrity and verifiability of the electronic ballots casted are still significant in most implementations of e-voting systems. In this paper, we developed a security scheme that was based on a hybrid Rivest-Sharma-Adleman (RSA) algorithm and Advance Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with Least Significant Bit (LSB) replacement algorithm for securing ballot information in an e-voting system. An e-voting system with multiple voting channels which includes poll site voting, mobile voting and remote internet voting was developed in the contextual Nigerian scenario. The electronic ballots casted via the system during experimental usage were encrypted using the hybrid RSA-AES algorithm to circumvent the problems of privacy, integrity and verifiability associated with many e-voting systems. The encrypted ballots were then hidden using LSB replacement algorithm to improve their integrity. The image quality of the cover image used and stego image obtained from the security scheme developed was quantitatively assessed using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Square Error (MSE) and Correlation. Furthermore, a performance evaluation based on users' perception of the developed e-voting system showed that the system satisfied most of the generic security requirements for electronic voting.