Blockchain security system of upcoming Moscow elections is violated
A French security researcher broke the encryption scheme of the voting system, based on blockchain technology, which will be used in the upcoming Moscow 2019 elections
Pierrick Gaudry, a professor at the University of Lorraine and a member of the French Research Institute INRIA, achieved a vulnerability in the voting system based on ethereum crypto technology that will be implemented in the next elections in Moscow.
According to the investigation presented, only 20 minutes were enough for Gaudry to calculate the private keys of the voting system based on the public keys. These keys are used to encrypt the votes of the users during the elections, in order to avoid their identity being known.
It is worth emphasizing that Gaudry points out that due to the implementation of the encryption scheme “ELGAMAL” with short encryption keys, the system becomes insecure, which allows to unlock the keys in just 20 minutes.
The researcher explains: “It can be broken in about 20 minutes using a standard personal computer and using only free software that is publicly available. Once these private keys are known, any encrypted information can be decrypted as quickly as it is created.”
At the moment, the extent of the privacy violation is unknown. In the worst case, the votes of all voters using this system will be revealed to anyone as soon as they are issued.
L. Sáenz
Source: Tekcrispy
