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[1]: https://members.loria.fr/PGaudry/moscow/ [2]: https://golovnev.org/papers/election.pdf
OK, so I think a little political context about this would be useful. On September 8th, Russia has "universal voting day", with elections to different regional parliaments, heads of some regions and even additional members of parliament. This year, the campaign have been very political because of Moscow parliament - which was for years treated as a completely uninteresting event with very low news coverage and turnou…
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.
The article doesn't mention this, but if you look at the paper[1] it turns out they aren't using ElGamal with elliptic curve fields -- instead they're using prime fields. In that case, you'd want similar key sizes to RSA. (The "less than 256 bit" part is a red herring, the problem is that they are using key sizes that would only be safe if they were using elliptic curves.) [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.05127.pdf
It’s shame that this wasn't used in production and then nefariously used against Putin.
I think Putin is quite popular in Russia and would have won in a free and fair election.
A moth ago a scientific paper was published with a formally proven mathematical model which described the last year's election of a Primorskiy kray governor. Results of that vote were nullified in 2 weeks just to make a new temporary governor so he would win an opposing candidate in the next one by using an administrative resource.
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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 102…
The paper[1] makes it much clearer. They aren't using elliptic curves, they're using prime fields with ElGamal (with a weird construction using three separate keys for some reason). The security is similar to RSA-256 (in other words, "awful") -- it makes sense that they could crack it in 20 minutes. [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.05127.pdf
Implementating complex crypto correctly is hard but its really not that tough to use common constructions in a secure way. A few days of reading can tell you how to build a cryptosystem that is at least not total holey cheese.
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The paper[1] makes it much clearer. They aren't using elliptic curves, they're using prime fields with ElGamal (with a weird construction using three separate keys for some reason). The security is similar to RSA-256 (in other words, "awful") -- it makes sense that they could crack it in 20 minutes. [1]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.05127.pdf
Why do people do weird stuff like this when there is gobs of good ECC code for things like ed25519 and ECDSA with standard curves that is easy to use and just sitting on GitHub? Implementating complex crypto correctly is hard but its really not that tough to use common constructions in a secure way. A few days of reading can tell you how to build a cryptosystem that is at least not total holey cheese.
Obviously using Curve25519 would've made it possible to have a secure setup under the "256 bit arithmetic only" constraints, but I have a feeling (assuming this theory is correct) that someone who thinks that three 256-bit keys are significantly more secure than one 256-bit key probably would've messed that up too.
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So more manipulation is better?
Think of the possible outcomes: -Status quo, old voting system. Corrupt process with vote results that remain in force. Nothing changes. -Novel, manipulated system where the regime loses the vote. The vote gets overturned because it's illegitimate in the wrong way. Maybe embarrassing to the authorities?
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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?
This election is already a sham since some opposition candidates were illegally prevented from participating in it.
Can you provide a source for that?
There's just no way any elections in Russia would produce the results not approved by the government. Government controls the entire chain of custody, from ballot counting to final vote tallies, and has been routinely falsifying the results at all levels. It often doesn't even need to tell those in charge to do anything: they "know" who should win and they make sure it happens. They also know they will have significa…
I live in an undemocratic country but even then, we have a fairly good opposition and kind of a free media thanks to the journalists taking the risk of prison and social media so I was really surprised to find out there is no powerful opposition in my country, all of the media belongs to him and we citizens are just dumb people who wouldn't know our country better than outsiders.
The thing is, a leader can't hold that much power. If he lost the election, s/he can play dirty, fight etc. but wouldn't be able to do as s/he pleases with the results. There is always a balance they need to be careful about and not everything is black and white.