A secure electronic voting software application based on image steganography and cryptography

Various electronic voting systems have been introduced as substitutes for traditional voting systems as electronic voting systems reduces the manual labor in collection, checking, transportation and counting of votes. However, with the growth of information technology, electronic voting systems are susceptible to malicious attacks (or threats) which undermine the integrity of the voting process. Simple encryption methods are not sufficient to protect the secrecy of election data. Encrypted data can cause suspicion, making it subject to malicious attacks. This research implements a novel approach by combining cryptography schemes with image steganography techniques. Besides improving security, steganography makes the data transmission over the network during the election become less suspicious too. After looking into the requirements of an electronic voting system, current electronic voting schemes available in published literature are examined. Next, the cryptographic and steganography techniques best suited for the requirements of our voting system are chosen and the software was implemented. They are namely Password Hashed-based Scheme, Visual Cryptography, F5 Image Steganography and Threshold Decryption Cryptosystem. Besides improving security, the research also aims to improve the quality of the voting process through user friendly interface design, reduction or elimination of additional hardware such as printers and scanners, improving the speed of the election process and end to end voter verifiability that includes a vote receipt. The last of these would increase the voter’s confidence in electronic voting.The electronic voting system developed is based on Web-based Java EE Technology and MySQL database using the Iterative Waterfall model as the Software Development Life Cycle approach. Java EE was chosen to develop the software because of its wide range of Application Programming Interface (API) that enhanced the software development by automating many of the business and security processes of implementation. A simple quantitative analysis has been also done for data analysis after software implementation by conducting usability testing. Here, the voter’s response and opinions of the system as a whole were observed. The studies, experiments and analysis done in this research resulted in an enhanced version of remote E2E system that provides a reliable and secure system with more flexibility and better performance compared to some reported E2E Voting Systems. Though implemented as a working prototype, the system can be implemented to support small to medium scale elections.