Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock and president of Medici Ventures, has issued a statement supporting blockchain in voting in response to the kno
Jonathan Johnson, CEO of Overstock and president of Medici Ventures, has issued a statement supporting blockchain in voting in response to the know-how’s vulnerabilities claims revealed on Feb. 13.
Rising applied sciences bought within the crosshairs of regulators when a cell software program utility that had been devised to assist calculate the entire variety of votes within the latest Iowa Democratic caucus reportedly malfunctioned, ensuing within the Democratic Social gathering having to delay its public reporting of final Monday’s outcomes.
However does blockchain actually fail on the subject of elections?
Following the Iowa caucus scandal, blockchain-based voting apps fell below scrutiny, which resulted in a Massachusetts Institute of Know-how’s safety analysis of Voatz, the self-styled first Web voting utility utilized in United States federal elections.
The researchers claimed that they’d discovered vulnerabilities in Voatz that allow “completely different sorts of adversaries to change, cease, or expose a consumer’s vote, together with a sidechannel assault through which a very passive community adversary can doubtlessly get better a consumer’s secret poll.”
As such, the authors of the evaluation concluded that the app isn’t safe, including that “our findings function a concrete illustration of the widespread knowledge in opposition to Web voting, and of the significance of transparency to the legitimacy of elections.”
Within the meantime, Voatz carried out its personal analysis by the CISA Hunt and Incident Response Staff (HIRT) to find out if there was proof of focused malicious exercise within the app’s community. HIRT concluded:
“HIRT analysts didn’t detect menace actor behaviors or artifacts of previous actions on the in-scope parts of the Voatz networks. HIRT recognized some areas the place defense-in-depth protections and configurations might be improved to assist Voatz’s IT safety personnel defend their enterprise community. HIRT commends Voatz for his or her proactive measures in using canaries, bug bounties, Shodan alerts, and lively inside scanning and pink teaming.”
Tech discussions run to extremes
In his Feb. 13 assertion, Johnson backed Voatz, saying that it prevents voting fraud and safeguards the privateness of every voter. He outlined that latest speculations round know-how in elections had run to extremes turning to an anti-technology and anti-learning stance. Johnson stated:
“I firmly consider this undermines American progress. This false premise is shutting down our pursuit of piloting, testing and creating applied sciences that not solely mitigate dangers, however makes voting accessible for populations who can not bodily get to the polls.”
Earlier in February, one other main blockchain-powered voting agency, Votem, pointed out that it’s nonetheless not utterly clear what operate the app offered for the Iowa Caucus. Pete Martin, CEO of Votem, stated in an e mail to Cointelegraph:
“Our evaluation is that this was not actually cell voting the place a verifiably authenticated voter is casting a verifiable and auditable digital encrypted poll that’s shuffled and publicly tallied. The Caucus is exclusive in that the voter’s identification is understood, however normally the voters identification is separated from their poll to guard their identification, all of which we element in our “Proof of Vote” protocol.”