That's interesting!  Can you give a bit more information about it's use 
for secure voting?  

(I think there is a typo in the blog post around the word "addend", or that's a 
word I don't recognize -- it's key to that sentence, which itself is the key 
sentence of that section -- so I'm left confused.)  

For example, would this be intended for a non-networked voting device that 
lacks physical security, such that the vote is secure against tampering by 
anyone lacking the private key?  If so, what's to prevent the simpler 
attack of just making all buttons increment the desired candidate?

Alternatively, if the device is networked (vote tally is incremented remotely), 
or if there *is* physical security, what value does this provide?

I'd love more information on the real world applications of this interesting 
concept.  Thanks!

-david



-- Sent from my Palm Pre
On Nov 25, 2011 7:46 AM, Alfonso De Gregorio <[email protected]> wrote: 

I'm glad to announce Encounter, a software library aimed at providinga

production-grade implementation of cryptographic counters andfostering

further research on their constructions and applications.



A cryptographic counter is a public string representing an encryption

of a quantity, satisfying the following properties:



1. Subjects with access to the *public-key* can update the

   encrypted counter by an arbitrary amount, by means of increment

   or decrement operations and without first decrypting the value

   (i.e., the operation is performed over encrypted data);



2. The plaintext value is hidden from all participants except the entity

   holding some secret key;



3. The adversary can only learn if the cryptographic counter was

   updated (i.e., information about whether the counter was incremented

   or decremented is kept hidden to all participants except the

   secret-key holder and the updating entity -- honest-but-curious

   threat model).



Cryptocounters have a number of applications ranging from

privacy-preserving statistics gathering in a honest-but-curious threat

model, to secure electronic voting, to digital rights management, and

cryptovirology.



For more, please check this blog post out:

http://plaintext.crypto.lo.gy/article/658/encounter



and fork the source code (released under the BSD license) at:

https://github.com/secYOUre/Encounter



Interested? Please, be in touch.



Cheers,



-- alfonso     blogs at http://Plaintext.crypto.lo.gy   tweets 
@secYOUre

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