Towards a formal analysis of information leakage for signature attacks in preferential elections

Abstract

Electronic voting is rich with paradoxes. How can a voter verify that his own vote has been correctly counted, but at the same time be prevented from revealing his vote to a third party? Not only is there no generally recognised solution to those problems, it is not generally agreed how to specify precisely what the problems are, and what exact threats they pose. Such a situation is ripe for the application of Formal Methods. In this paper we explore so-called signature attacks, where an apparently secure system can nevertheless be manipulated to reveal a voter's choice in unexpected and subtle ways. We describe two examples in detail, and from that make proposals about where formal techniques might apply. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.