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Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

zdnet.com

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Re: Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

#4

Post by hutzlibu »

calewis wrote: post #3

It’s shame that this wasn't used in production and then nefariously used against Putin.

Ah yes, the best way to deal with semi-autocrats, if people still vote them, you manipulate the election - but of course for democracy!

Seriously?

Re: Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

#8

Post by stackzero »

spuz wrote: post #5

I'm definitely missing something here. The standard size of both Ethereum and Bitcoin private keys is a 256bit secp256k1 key. If a 256bit key is guessable within 20 mins then the entire Blockchain is also broken.

Scanned the paper and looks like they're using keys that are < 256-bit hence the vulnerability. Also I think the encryption keys which were found vulnerable are separate from the transaction signing keys

Re: Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

#9

Post by hutzlibu »

stackzero wrote: post #8
spuz wrote: post #5

I'm definitely missing something here. The standard size of both Ethereum and Bitcoin private keys is a 256bit secp256k1 key. If a 256bit key is guessable within 20 mins then the entire Blockchain is also broken.

Scanned the paper and looks like they're using keys that are < 256-bit hence the vulnerability. Also I think the encryption keys which were found vulnerable are separate from the transaction signing keys

But then the article and its citation is plain wrong. 256 bit keys(3 of them) are cited multiple times

""This is a mystery," the French researcher said. "The only possible explanation we can think of is that the designers thought this would compensate for the too small key sizes of the primes involved. But 3 primes of 256 bits are really not the same as one prime of 768 bits."

However, a public key of a length of 1024 bits may not be enough, according to Gaudry, who believes officials should use one of at least 2048 bits instead."

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