51–60 of 112 posts
But this sure surprised me:Pierrick Gaudry, from Lorraine University, was able to break the Ethereum-based smart contract encryption in only 20 minutes using nothing more than an average desktop computer and free, publicly available software. Gaudry estimates more modern equipment and sophisticated techniques could crack the encryption in only 10 minutes."
The paper notes another, distinct, attack possibility: > Before going to this, we mention quickly another mistake in the design that could in itself have led to devastating attacks. The generators that are given in public- key.json are generators of the whole multiplicative group. However, due to the Chinese remainder theorem, it is a good practice to use a generator of prime order. In the present case, the generator…
Can someone explain what the GitHub org and GitHub repo for https://github.com/moscow-technologies/blockchain-voting is about? If this was about to be used for elections, shouldn't such a critical piece of software have more developers working on it? Why is there only one contributor to the whole project? Why does it have only 37 stars? Is this project well known among the citizens?
So it's more like a proof of concept, and a first step in making larger-scale electronic elections possible in the future (from technological, political, organizational, and public trust standpoints).
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…
How do you know that, though? Are you a citizen of Russia? Because if you are not, I'm suspicious. 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 dum…
Putin's Russia is a very blatant authoritarian regime.
Thru recurring embarrassment, I've learned that you start with the jurisdiction's laws, rules, procedures, manuals.
Update: Julia Krivonosova, cited by this OC paper, appears to be doing excellent work, and does cover some of the context, assumptions. She'd definitely a better election integrity advocate than I ever was.
Internet voting in Russia. How? https://medium.com/@juliakrivonosova/internet-voting-in-russ...
The Dizzying Whimsy of Russia’s Electoral Laws https://medium.com/@juliakrivonosova/the-dizzying-whimsy-of-... https://www.ridl.io/en/the-dizzying-whimsy-of-russias-electi...
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It's possible (however unlikely) that a voting system built on top of Etherium is perfectly reasonable for Moscow, Russia, where ever.
Even in the USA, where the Australian Ballot (private voting, public counting) is the gold standard, there are many, many exceptions (compromises made). For very good reasons. For instance, postal balloting. Originally implemented to enfranchise soldiers kept away from their homes for long durations.
Further, even in the USA, YMMV. Local variations impact election administration. For instance, how "voter intent" is adjudicated (when a mistake is made by the voter).
If we don't start with the context and assumptions, we end up talking past each other, and getting no where.
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Though I am a blockchain skeptic, for voting and tabulation, there are other exciting potential applications. Election administration is a big, complicated problem. While tabulation is the most important step, it's also relatively minor.
Since blockchain is just a shared ledger, it could help with pretty much every other step: candidate filing, political boundaries (GIS), voter registration (eligibility), reporting campaign contributions and expenses, publishing reports (certification), audit of material handling. Etc.
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…
How do you know that, though? Are you a citizen of Russia? Because if you are not, I'm suspicious. 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 dum…
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…
It's the "belt and suspenders" approach to vote manipulation.
All other properties must be verified by the client, don't require a blockchain, and are typically some other cryptographic proof.
There are many properties of a blockchain that are an anti-feature of voting.
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.
Totally different kind of cryptography. sec256k1 is an elliptic curve, and 256-bit elliptic curves are generally believed to provide comparable security to 3072-bit RSA or DH or ElGamal. (See https://www.keylength.com for a good compilation of reputable comparisons along these lines.)
https://www.iad.gov/iad/library/ia-guidance/ia-solutions-for...)