Last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the first four quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. In fact, quantum computing could potentially crack the security used to protect the digital systems we rely on every day.
“The EquiVox project addresses the security challenges posed by quantum computing, which has the potential to break cryptographic algorithms commonly used in electronic voting systems,” says Prof. Peter Ryan in a recent interview with Techsense. “Elections present unique challenges, due to the vote privacy requirements there is no god’s eye view to determine if an election outcome is correct. The project’s focus is on developing verifiable voting systems that not only produce accurate results but also provide convincing evidence of their correctness,” he says.
Prof. Ryan’s interest in secure voting systems dates back almost 20 years when he started working on a large-scale project on the dependability of critical systems at the University of Newcastle. In this interview, he addresses the challenges for e-voting caused by quantum computing, the different approaches to voting systems (in-person and internet voting), and the concept of “everlasting security” against attackers with infinite computing power.
“If quantum computers capable of running algorithms like Shor’s algorithm become a reality, contemporary public key asymmetric cryptography, including extensively used algorithms like RSA and Diffie-Hellman, would be rendered obsolete. (…) While the timeline for the development of large-scale quantum computers remains uncertain, experts in the field emphasise the need to prepare for this eventuality. The EquiVox project explores how to address this problem specifically in the context of voting systems, aiming to develop secure and verifiable schemes that are resistant to quantum computing threats,” explains Prof. Ryan.
Read the entire interview on Techsense.