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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

#61

Post by segfaultbuserr »

cyphar wrote: post #18
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.

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

Wow, they are using conventional discrete log cryptography with 256-bit key? What the actual fxxk?! It's literally the equivalent of using 256-bit Diffie-Hellman, or RSA-256, DSA-256, dammit, even NSA's bad DH_EXPORT ciphers use 512-bit. Totally unbelievable.

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

#62

Post by m0zg »

notfromhere wrote: post #54
CENGaverK wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Voting irregularities are pretty standard in Russia, lots of international observers and reports have established it. Opposition candidates are regularly jailed, major protests and civil actions are suppressed, and if you really get under the Kremlin's skin, you find yourself assassinated or thrown out of a window. Putin's Russia is a very blatant authoritarian regime.

Not just Putin's. There was only one time in my lifetime when nobody knew who would win the election. That was the 1996 election which was largely won by Yeltsin by hiring a bunch of consultants from the US to run it (and I also suspect that his campaign was at least in part financed by the US as well - his opponent was Gennady Zyuganov, a communist). Other than that I don't recall any even somewhat democratic elections at all. Needless to say, there weren't any real elections in the USSR either. Nor under Czar before that. It's a long, established tradition.

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

#63

Post by fnord77 »

DINKDINK wrote: post #58

The only benefit a "Blockchain" can provide is decentralized time ordering. 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.

> There are many properties of a blockchain that are an anti-feature of voting.

I don't know much of anything about blockchains and voting. What properties do you consider antifeatures?

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

#64

Post by orbital-decay »

m0zg wrote: post #62
notfromhere wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting irregularities are pretty standard in Russia, lots of international observers and reports have established it. Opposition candidates are regularly jailed, major protests and civil actions are suppressed, and if you really get under the Kremlin's skin, you find yourself assassinated or thrown out of a window. Putin's Russia is a very blatant authoritarian regime.

Not just Putin's. There was only one time in my lifetime when nobody knew who would win the election. That was the 1996 election which was largely won by Yeltsin by hiring a bunch of consultants from the US to run it (and I also suspect that his campaign was at least in part financed by the US as well - his opponent was Gennady Zyuganov, a communist). Other than that I don't recall any even somewhat democratic electi…

>largely won by Yeltsin by hiring a bunch of consultants from the US to run it

You sure it wasn't due to other candidates giving up their ambitions to stop Zyuganov?

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

#65

Post by seppin »

hutzlibu wrote: post #4
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?

semi-autocrats?

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

#66

Post by m0zg »

orbital-decay wrote: post #64
m0zg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just Putin's. There was only one time in my lifetime when nobody knew who would win the election. That was the 1996 election which was largely won by Yeltsin by hiring a bunch of consultants from the US to run it (and I also suspect that his campaign was at least in part financed by the US as well - his opponent was Gennady Zyuganov, a communist). Other than that I don't recall any even somewhat democratic electi…

>largely won by Yeltsin by hiring a bunch of consultants from the US to run it You sure it wasn't due to other candidates giving up their ambitions to stop Zyuganov?

Pretty sure. In the first round Zuyganov and Yeltsin were neck and neck. Zuyganov looked _very_ viable to most of the older voting population who had quite enough of the "wild 90's" and wanted to go back to the socialist certainty of how things were before Perestroika, at least to some extent, and Zuyganov promised exactly that. Or at least how they remembered how things were: people tend to forget the bad things first, this is called the "good old days syndrome".

Russian presidents don't usually try to dance awkwardly on stage unless things are truly desperate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRysHHzLAmM :-)

The entirety of Russia's entertainment industry was paid huge amounts of cash, mostly under the table, to stage concerts in support of Yeltsin. Where that cash came from nobody knows to this day.

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

#67

Post by seppin »

equalunique wrote: post #48
Grue3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This election is already a sham since some opposition candidates were illegally prevented from participating in it.

>some opposition candidates were illegally prevented from participating in it Can you provide a source for that?

The last three years of protests and arrests?

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

#68

Post by seppin »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #49
ebg13 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have free and fair elections when the opposition periodically gets assassinated.

I didn’t say it was free and fair.

How do you know he's popular either? State run opinion polls? Asking people on the street about if they like their ruthless dictator or not?

Sure.

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

#69

Post by ummonk »

m0zg wrote: post #56
CENGaverK wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes I am, in fact, a citizen of Russia. I'm also a US citizen. I know this because there's been both video and statistical evidence, as well as numerous reports of electoral district vote counters simply falsifying final vote tallies, people being bused around to vote in multiple districts, etc, etc. Statistical evidence of vote count manipulation is actually pretty damning. If you calculate the distribution of vote…

Don’t those spikes happen in small districts though, where you’re likely to have 1,2,4,5,10,or20 votes which would all guarantee a result with a multiple of 5 or 10%?

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

#70

Post by cat199 »

jplayer01 wrote: post #31
rebuilder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Meddling with foreign elections is the quickest way to create inner turmoil and conflict. Instead of busying themselves with creating a functioning democracy, you've just created an illegitimate system which will be destroyed from the inside-out, while provoking hate for the meddling party. I don't see the upside here unless you intend to (and are able to) keep it a secret for forever or unless turmoil and suffering…

Hey, don't complain - if it worked when the Germans sent Lenin over with a train full of gold, it can work again!
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