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Cryptographically Securing Democratic Elections with Block Chain Technology

Securing Democratic Elections using cryptography, is actually very easy. In fact, what I am describing in this article, is really nothing but "blockchain for Democracy". But since we're all coders here, let me start with some simple pseudo code.

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The whole idea with the above pseudo code, is that it results in a "chain of votes", where each individual vote, is based upon its previous vote's hash value. Then the first vote, is based upon the hash value of the subject and its content.

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Cryptographic Hash Function Menagerie

Here's an oversimplified survey of cryptographic hash functions: everyone used to use MD5, now they use some variation on SHA.

There's some truth to that. MD5 was very popular and remains popular years after it was proven insecure. And now, variations on SHA like SHA1 and SHA256 are commonly used. But there are a lot more cryptographic hash functions in common use.

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Trust Models for Secure Network Connections

The Concept of Trust in Cybersecurity

Everyone is talking about the strength of cryptography and its susceptibility to new generations of computing programs. For example, there’s a wealth of discussion about preferable algorithms that should be used for authentication and encryption. Much of this debate is framed within the context of fears and assumptions about a future in which quantum computing holds sway.

Quantum computing may make it possible to execute certain algorithms in a matter of seconds instead of days. The ramifications, should this eventuality come to pass, are huge, not just for cryptocurrencies but for the entire Internet. A quantum breakthrough raises the risk of breaking most of our existing encrypted security protocols — think online banking, VPNs, database storage, digital signatures, blockchains, and disk encryption. Although it looks like functional quantum computers are still a few years off, no one can be entirely sure quite how well they will work against cryptography until they are readily available.