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How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

quantamagazine.org

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Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#11

Post by hackerlight »

defrost wrote: post #5
pGuitar wrote: post #4

zero-knowledge proof is very nice... and could be used to prove election results: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/466.pdf

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

That's why we should remove all voting machines. Not because they're unsafe, but because they're an attack vector for cynical actors to sow distrust.

There's no way the small efficiency gain from automation is worth that cost.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#12

Post by pexabit »

defrost wrote: post #5
pGuitar wrote: post #4

zero-knowledge proof is very nice... and could be used to prove election results: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/466.pdf

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

Well secure and rather indisputably valid elections are a solved problem, and many countries manage it. Identified electors cast ballots on paper counted under recorded and public observation. (I think a scantron would be fine, too).

It is just that we choose not to do this. A provably convincing election isn’t actually some hard, unsolved problem. (And yes- if you mention zero knowledge proofs in your story of why the election is safe, people will look askance because an observably valid election is a solved problem, and many countries manage it)

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#14

Post by defrost »

pc86 wrote: post #7
defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

"Central north america" is a really weird way of saying "the US."

"United States" is a weird description of the current situation within central north america.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#15

Post by [deleted] »

hackerlight wrote: post #11
defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

That's why we should remove all voting machines. Not because they're unsafe, but because they're an attack vector for cynical actors to sow distrust. There's no way the small efficiency gain from automation is worth that cost.

[deleted]

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#17

Post by vidyesh »

yazzku wrote: post #8

Side topic, but why does something relatively respectable like Quanta Magazine need a reading progress bar? These odd decisions truly amaze me sometimes.

Maybe because it can then also cater to audiences who do not generally visit such sites or reading long-er articles.

or maybe it recapture reader's attention, there recently (or always have been) this idea that if you don't like what you are reading you can move on and not waste your time especially with books. But most people generally want to know how that thing ends. So they make a quick decision how little time they have to spend based on the percentage of the reading material remaining.

Either way a reading progress bar is a UX improvement and has nothing to do with the intellect of the reader.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#18

Post by googlryas »

defrost wrote: post #14
pc86 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Central north america" is a really weird way of saying "the US."

"United States" is a weird description of the current situation within central north america.

They're extremely united. In fact, I can cross over a dozen state borders per day and not even really realize I did so.

Re: How to prove you know a secret without giving it away

#19

Post by pexabit »

hackerlight wrote: post #11
defrost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As demonstrated in central north america recently the real challenge isn't in proving election results .. it's in the greater social challenge of propagating belief and trust in the results in the face of concerted efforts to widely undermine such. That's a whole other kettle of fish.

That's why we should remove all voting machines. Not because they're unsafe, but because they're an attack vector for cynical actors to sow distrust. There's no way the small efficiency gain from automation is worth that cost.

I don’t think a scantron machine not connected to the Internet would sow distrust. We have seen them in our high schools. And Adversarial observers can validate the results on test samples quite easily.

Which raises the question- why do we use the really awkward, blackbox and sometimes networked machines that we do, manufactured by weird companies rather than whoever makes scantron machines or whatever?

And this isn’t just about “dumb Republicans” or what have you. Here’s Scott Aaronson [1] in 2016:

> For that matter, if Russia or some other power hacked the trivially-hackable electronic voting machines that lack paper trails—machines that something like a third of American voters still used this election—there’s an excellent chance we’d never find out.

“Antivirus on voting machines? You’re doing it wrong.” [2]

The thing that really gets me is, even if you wanted to use machines, you wouldn’t use the weird machines made by shady companies that we do. Different counties would buy standard scantron machines used to grade high school finals off the shelf, and verify it in ways that are obvious to all of us.

[1] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2957

[2] https://xkcd.com/463/

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