[ale] OT: Electronic Voting in GA

[Bjorn Dittmer-Roche]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Bob Toxen wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 20, 2002 at 11:25:58PM -0600, Joseph A Knapka wrote:
>
> > Public key cryptography allows us to achieve provably
> > secure electronic voting, immune from this sort of

I should dispell a myth here. Public key cryptography has NOT been proven
to be secure through any mathematical process. RSA, for example, depends
on one very important assumption: that it is prohibitively difficult to
factor numbers that are composites of large primes. This has not been
proven, and even if it can be proven, it would still be possible that an
algorithm exists with a high probability of finding prime factors in a
reasonable amount of time. (since any solution can be checked in a short
amount of time, this seems likely)

In fact, the solution to the more general problem is not known. (ie:  if a
solution can be checked in a reasonable amount of time, does that mean
that a solution can be found in a reasonable amount of time?) RSA rests on
the belief that it is just too darn hard to factor numbers into large
primes. Most people *accept* that it is too darn hard, and that's why we
trust it. Most people take the fact that it has gone uncracked for many
years as "proof" that it will remain uncracked, but the mathematical proof
is much more elusive.

	bjorn