Cure the problem Platform security to vote online in Europe

Abstract

The State Chancellery of the canton of Geneva published the final report of a committee appointed to study and assess the security of a remote voting application over the Internet [Gen02]. The report concluded that the application provided a reasonable level of security, but that at least two security-related issues needed to be carefully considered:

• Problem with the authenticity of the server: Internet users do not generally care about the authenticity of the server and therefore do not properly verify public key certificates. This problem also applies to servers used for remote Internet voting.
• Problem of platform security: citizens voting on the Internet and their platforms are vulnerable to malware (computer viruses, Trojans, etc.) and can therefore be attacked.

As a possible solution to these problems, the committee's report suggests that the State of Geneva distribute CD-ROMs to voters. These CD-ROMs would include the software and public key certificates required to authenticate the Internet voting server (s) and to vote remotely in a sufficiently secure manner. The report further distinguishes between three approaches to configuring and distributing CD-ROMs1.