Performance Evaluation Of Cloud Based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital Signature E-Voting System For The Conduct Of Election In Nigeria

Abstract

ABSTRACT Elections in Nigeria are characterized with poor voters’ turnout. One of the reasons attributed to this is the insecurity of the votes of the electorates. To resolve this, scholars have adopted various mechanisms and technologies, for example, the use of Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), Advanced Encryption StandardAES) and Elliptic Curves Cryptography (ECC). While these have added value to the body of knowledge in the conduct of elections in Nigeria, However, literature reveals that issue of insecurity of votes of electorate is still a current debate. The reason attributed to this, is due to the poor performance in terms of their key size, key strength and encryption time. This is addressed by using a Cloud based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital signature (ECCDS) E-Voting system. The concept of the proposed system is to automatically encrypts, signs, decrypts votes and verifies the signed votes. The system is built on a hybridized security algorithms, these are; The ECC and Digital Signature Algorithm. This has a smart contractor that protect electorate votes against integrity modification in the cloud environment. The prototype demonstration is conducted during the students’ union election in Adekunle Ajasin University where the University ICT department is used as the cloud based network Infrastructure center. Three evaluation metrics are used. These are the key size, key strength and encryption time. The evaluation metrics shows a better performance of RSA, AES and ECC systems over the ECCD when considering the encryption time. The ECC and AES also perform better using the key size. For example, we recorded 167 bits for ECCDS, while RSA, AES and ECC algorithms recorded 163, 1024 and 64 bits respectively from one of the experiments under the key size. However, the beauty and the strength of good security system is the decryption time which is the key strength. From the experiment conducted using Key strength as the metric, we observed that ECCDS key strength is higher than that of AES, ECC and RSA. It means that it will take longer time for any intruder to decrypt the system when using the ECCDS model. This satisfy both the electorates and Electoral commission request and is very reliable and produces effective results. Keywords: E-voting, Integrity, Elliptic Curve, Cryptography, Digital Signature. CISDI Journal Reference Format Akingbesote. A.O., Babatobi, F.J. & Akinwumi, D. A. (2023): Performance Evaluation Of Cloud Based Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Digital Signature E-Voting System For The Conduct Of Election In Nigeria. Computing, Information Systems, Development Informatics &Allied Research Journal. Vol 13No 2, Pp 1-.14. Availableonlineathttps://www.isteams.net/cisdijournal. dx.doi.org/10.22624/AIMS/CISDI/V14N3P1