Scalable and Secure Polling in Dynamic Distributed Networks

Abstract

Abstract-We consider the problem of securely conducting a poll in synchronous dynamic networks equipped with a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Whereas previous distributed solutions had a communication cost of O(n 2 ) in an n nodes system, we present SPP (Secure and Private Polling), the first distributed polling protocol requiring only a communication complexity of O(n log 3 n), which we prove is near-optimal. Our protocol ensures perfect security against a computationally-bounded adversary, tolerates ( > > 0 (not depending on n), and outputs the exact value of the poll with high probability. SPP is composed of two sub-protocols, which we believe to be interesting on their own: SPP-Overlay maintains a structured overlay when nodes leave or join the network, and SPP-Computation conducts the actual poll. We validate the practicality of our approach through experimental evaluations and describe briefly two possible applications of SPP: (1) an optimal Byzantine Agreement protocol whose communication complexity is Θ(n log n) and (2) a protocol solving an open question of King and Saia in the context of aggregation functions, namely on the feasibility of performing multiparty secure aggregations with a communication complexity of o(n 2 ).

Distributed Protocols at the Rescue for Trustworthy Online Voting

“…However, several issues render an implementation of a decentralised voting protocol based on this scheme difficult. As (Gambs et al 2011) points out, the communication complexity for n participants is O n 2 , or in the case of the existence of a trusted party, O (n). Both render the scheme impractical for large-scale distributed online voting.…”

“…Scalable and Secure Aggregation Protocol An intermediate solution between a centralised online voting protocol based on cryptography and an aggregation by the voters is given with Scalable and Secure Aggregation (SPP) (Gambs et al 2011). Voters are grouped using a chord overlay into clusters of equal size in order to partition potential dishonest voters.…”

“…It is remarkable, that this scheme provides secrecy Gambs et al 2011 random authorities structured, tree aggregation DPol, Guerraoui et al 2012 none structured, ring all Blockchain-based Voting none (flexible) distributed all of the ballot without the employment of cryptography. The protocol authors describe means to determine dishonest voters with high probability without falsepositives and tag them accordingly, e.g.…”

DiVote: A Distributed Voting Protocol for Mobile Device-to-Device Communication

“…Such aggregation functions are of high importance in large-scale distributed systems where there is a need to compute global system properties [1].…”

On Constrained Adding Friends in Social Networks

“…To preserve data privacy during the running of these computations, recent works [8,9,10,12,27] use a simple secret sharing scheme which allows users to obfuscate their inputs. For instance, [7,9,10,12] proposed distributed polling protocols in social networks without requiring cryptographic system. Polling is the way to determine the most favorite choice amongst some options from the participants.…”