VOTINGONTOSEC: A SECURITY ONTOLOGY FOR RISK MODELING IN ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS

Abstract

Blockchain voting needs a security model for shared infrastructure, cryptographic tools, and election rules. General ontologies do not jointly cover its threats and standards-based risk assessment. This paper presents VotingOntoSec, an OWL ontology aligned with ISO/IEC 27005. It represents assets, threats, vulnerabilities, risks, and countermeasures, including Sybil and smart-contract attacks and cryptographic protections. Development in Protégé 5.6.1 was followed by graph-based structural tests, HermiT 1.4.3 reasoning, competency-question assessment, comparison with five representative ontologies, and a Smart City voting scenario. The ontology contains 118 classes, 16 object properties, and 9 data properties. Its class hierarchy has no cycles, and HermiT found all named classes satisfiable. A five-asset example illustrates traceability from a vulnerable asset through an exploiting threat to a suitable control. Expert-assigned likelihood and criticality estimates yield reproducible inherent and residual risk scores. In the illustrative calculation, the criticality-weighted system score decreases from 0.81 to 0.32 after applying modeled controls; rankings remain unchanged as the likelihood weight varies from 0.3 to 0.7. Among the compared models, VotingOntoSec uniquely combines voting-specific blockchain threats, cryptographic countermeasures, and ISO/IEC 27005-aligned risk analysis. The case includes voter data, the ledger, consensus nodes, a communication channel, and a voting device. Results help rank needed controls and show how risk may change as inputs or weights change. The numerical example is illustrative rather than an empirical performance evaluation. The ontology and scripts are available for independent verification and reuse. VotingOntoSec provides a new practical semantic basis for structured security assessment of decentralized voting systems at scale.

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