Category: Cryptography

I spoke on a Docent Institute webinar last night co-hosted by Iowa Illinois IEEE Section – R4 and IEEE Computer Society (Iowa-Illinois Chapter). The title of the talk is, “Navigating Cybersecurity and Systemic Risk in a Rapidly Advancing Technological Landscape”where I discussed #cybersecurity and #systemic_risk. Thanks to Binto George & Michael Umakor, who were co-hosts. Check out the video! You may find the video and slides here:

• VIDEO: https://youtu.be/LzpsoYEKpzE
• SLIDES: https://docent.org/resources/Systemic.Risk.Johnson2-IEEE-12.18.24.pdf

I have a thought that blockchain and PKI could provide election integrity.

The goal would be to provide one vote per citizen, and some ideal blockchain method would ensure this. Along with PKI (some hash or encryption which is unique) every citizen would be able to validate how they voted (it could be a receipt with a code/QR code which they could retain). The government could not reverse that and see how any individual voted, only that they voted one time. There would need to be a process for a voter to dispute their vote, in the case it is falsified.

The devil is in the details. I think this would need to be a distributed blockchain managed by the government, but which citizens could also participate in, or a third party.

There are political and technical issues to overcome, clearly. However\, I believe that it is possible. It would mean a national standard for elections, but it could also maintain voting at voting stations as well as voting online.

This may come close to essentially having a Voter ID (no more intrusive than having a Social Security Number or Drivers License), however it could also be validated at the polling place. The more nodes involved, the harder it would be to cheat the system.

I am investigating this with experts. If the answer is that the technology will not support what I envision, that is fine. I think that we have experts and the technology to pull it off. At the same time, I recognize that any connected/networked system can be vulnerable to attack. I believe that the more we have a distributed ledger of election transactions, the harder it is to subvert the system.

This would involve a change to how we vote, to a degree, and certainly a change to the underlying technology used nationally. States would need to buy into the process and when technology needs to be replaced, it is not necessarily inexpensive. But, I think we have the technology to ensure people cast their vote and it is properly counted. I am working with experts to contemplate how this might be done.

This does not solve the problem of voters being influenced to vote a certain way, but I think it could provide a secure and immutable way to have votes counted. One vote per person.

What do you think? Nothing is perfect, but I think this would be an improvement and very difficult to subvert on a large scale. There would be some forensic record of tampering, since there would be many distributed nodes recording transactions, with appropriate anonymity.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-ssl-is-part-of-the-problem-behind-a-dramatic-increase-in-malware-and-ramsomware-in-q1-2018/