mspecter

5 ms·

1.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Also, I'm just the professor, the grad students on it are the real heroes: Akshaya Kumar [1] and Anna Raymaker [2]. [1] https://akumar805.github.io/ [2] https://annaraymaker.dad/
2.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Interesting! Hadn't heard of it.
3.
by mspecter 2mo ago
In general, yes! We did some follow on work explaining how all of this works, depending on the provider: https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0113.pdf
4.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Last author on the paper here ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.00350 ). Happy to answer any questions!
5.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Good point. Most of this was written before the signal-custom-client thing happened, so it wasn't top of mind. We also considered "serious" systems, deployed en masse. Perhaps we should've included this as well.
6.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Oh, I didn't realize it'd made it to Schneier's blog, thanks for letting me know! A goal of the work was to try to explain to a new audience (specifically nontechnical legal folks) the ongoing challenges with Going Dark. Hope
7.
by mspecter 2mo ago
Coauthor here, somewhat surprised to see this on HN. Any thoughts, questions, or feedback welcome.
8.
by mspecter 8mo ago
The secret ballot is usually considered a core goal of an elections system, blockchain involvement or not.
9.
by mspecter 8mo ago
I have not personally, but there's some fantastic work on the subject: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9152765?signou... They find a few really bad issues. IIRC, the Swiss Post is looking into i
10.
by mspecter 8mo ago
You might be interested in some prior work on blockchain voting, it's a bit harder to get right than one might think, and actually introduces some problems [1,2]. [1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurit
11.
by mspecter 8mo ago
Hey all, coauthor here. Interesting to see it on Hacker News. I'm a professor in Georgia Tech's CS dept that works on problems related to security, privacy, and public policy. (CV: https://mikespecter.com/ ) Happy
12.
Tile Tracking Tags Can Be Exploited(wired.com)
3 points by mspecter 1y ago|0 comments
13.
Fixing Deniability for Email: KeyForge and Timeforge(mit.edu)
1 points by mspecter 6y ago|0 comments
14.
by mspecter 6y ago
Hi! Check out our Usenix 2021 paper on exactly this topic. The key insight is to release private keys over time: http://www.mit.edu/~specter/blog/2020/dkim/
15.
Why your email isn't deniable, and a proposal to fix it(mit.edu)
3 points by mspecter 6y ago|1 comments
16.
KeyForge and TimeForge: New Crypto to Fix Email Deniability(mit.edu)
3 points by mspecter 6y ago|0 comments
17.
by mspecter 7y ago
To push this further, I was working on a research paper with Ron Rivest, Neha Narula (head of MIT's decentralized currency initiative), and Sunoo Park (a wonderful applied cryptographer) on whether blockchains in general could be hel
18.
by mspecter 7y ago
> How confident are you that we could reach a well engineered and proofed electronic voting platform that also adheres to theoretical rules around vote security? I don't think we can with the current commodity devices / ecosyst
19.
by mspecter 7y ago
To put this in short-hand: "We bank online, we buy all sorts of stuff online, why not vote?" The biggest reason is that banking and other financial transactions have a very different threat model from voting. In particular, voting
20.
by mspecter 7y ago
That's a wonderful question. The honest answer is that I have no idea. In the version we reverse engineered, there's no proof of inclusion of any of the data in the blockchain in the client, and the receipt system was via a PDF. T
21.
by mspecter 7y ago
Oh, hi. I'm Mike Specter, lead author on the MIT report [1], and have been involved in other voting-related research projects [2,3]. LMK if you all have any questions! 1. https://internetpolicy.mit.edu/wp-content/u
22.
MIT researchers identify security vulnerabilities in voting app(news.mit.edu)
4 points by mspecter 7y ago|0 comments
23.
by mspecter 7y ago
Hijacking this to say that we need the following: 1. Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs)[1] 2. Software independence [2] 3. Paper-backed ballots (which are the official record of the vote) that are physically voter-verified (as a requirement for th
24.
by mspecter 7y ago
Yep! https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6.945/ I'm in his group at MIT.
25.
by mspecter 7y ago
Sure, though, to be pedantic, a common example of moral hazard is the increased likelihood of driving recklessly in the presence of mandatory seat belts. See https://web.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/RESTAT2003.pdf
26.
by mspecter 7y ago
>"Insured" can be interpreted very broadly; moral hazard is whenever the negative outcomes of a risky decision are directed away from oneself. Nope! That's called an externality. A moral hazard is a type of externality, bu
27.
by mspecter 7y ago
A moral hazard happens when an entity is somehow insured against something (e.g. health insurance), so is rationally more likely to behave in some "bad" way (e.g. driving recklessly). I'm not seeing how this a moral hazard, d
28.
by mspecter 8y ago
More reading: https://www.npr.org/2017/11/22/566039611/colorado-launches-f... Colorado successfully performed an RLA, and didn't have to recount every ballot. If you really want to read more, Free a
29.
by mspecter 8y ago
This is absolute hogwash, there are other methods than a full hand recount if you have a paper trail, some of which only require counting a small number of the ballots by hand. The best example of this is a Risk Limiting Audit (RLA). You on
30.
by mspecter 8y ago
No.

More ›