Russian Federal Remote E-voting Scheme of 2021 -- Protocol Description and Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents the details of one of the two cryptographic remote e-voting protocols used in the Russian parliamentary elections of 2021. As the official full version of the scheme has never been published by the election organisers, our paper aims at putting together as complete picture as possible from various incomplete sources. As all the currently available sources are in Russian, our presentation also aims at serving the international community by making the description available in English for further studies. In the second part of the paper, we provide an initial analysis of the protocol, identifying the potential weaknesses under the assumptions of corruption of the relevant key components. As a result, we conclude that the biggest problems of the system stem from weak voter authentication. In addition, as it was possible to vote from any device with a browser and Internet access, the attack surface was relatively large in general