One of the worldâs leading security organizations, the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR), has annulled the results of its annual leadership election after an official misplaced an encryption key essential for unlocking results stored in a secured voting system.
The IACR announced on Friday that votes were collected and processed using Helios, an open-source voting system employing peer-reviewed cryptography to ensure verifiable, confidential, and privacy-respecting election processes. Helios encrypts each vote to keep ballots secret while allowing voters to confirm the accurate counting of their votes.
An 'honest but unfortunate human mistake'
According to the associationâs regulations, three members of the election committee serve as independent trustees, each holding a third of the cryptographic key material required for decrypting results. This structure discourages the collusion of any two trustees.
âRegrettably, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key, an honest but unfortunate human mistake, and hence cannot produce their decryption share,â the IACR stated. âConsequently, Helios is unable to finalize the decryption process, making it technically impossible for us to discover or verify the final election outcomes.â
To prevent future occurrences, the IACR will implement a revised mechanism for private key management. Future elections will require only two of the three key segments instead. Moti Yung, the trustee who lost his portion of the key material, has resigned and will be replaced by Michel Abdalla.
The IACR is a nonprofit scientific entity tasked with advancing research in cryptology and related fields. Cryptology involves the science and practice of crafting computational and communication systems that remain secure against adversarial threats. The association has begun a new election, which started Friday and will continue until December 20.