You couldn’t make this situation up
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Cryptology boffins’ association to re-run election after losing encryption key needed to count votes
The International Association for Cryptologic Research will run a second election for new board members and other officers, after it was unable to complete its first poll due to a lost encryption key. As explained in November 21 election update, the association (IACR) used an electronic voting system called “Helios” to run its …
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Monday 24th November 2025 06:23 GMT Bebu sa Ware
IACR shouldn't have accepted Baldrick as a member...
let alone as one of the three trustees holding one of the three
rings of powerencryption keys.A cunning plan: he probably wrote his portion of the key under the third sheet of a roll of toilet paper where no one would look.
One only hope that Melbourne, Australia is where the conference will actually be organised and not Melbourne, Florida. ;)
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Monday 24th November 2025 07:06 GMT Like a badger
Re: IACR shouldn't have accepted Baldrick as a member...
Well,looking to the positives, somewhere a wife is saying "About bloody time Graham! I'm glad I threw out that post it note on your monitor and you've had to resign, all because it needs three cryptologists to add up a few numbers! The time you've wasted on that bloody cryptology society nonsense! And i still haven't forgiven you for my birthday card that was in ROT13. Then there was the time we got thrown out of the bank after you demanded that two other employees needed to vouch for the cashier, and then the same for those other two employees. It was even worse than when you were Grand Moose in the Masons and were asked to leave for pointing out 37 logical flaws and 11 continuity errors in the third degree ritual of craft masonry. What is it about you and secret societies meeting in sheds? Anyway, now you can fix the dripping tap in the bathroom and put up that shelf you said you would"
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Monday 24th November 2025 08:08 GMT Richard 12
Important learning experience
It's apparently taken until now for these boffins to realise that the Real World exists, and people are human.
Security systems that rely on human perfection cannot possibly work. They must be designed to continue to function when the squishy bits make mistakes. That means recovery options, alternatives etm.
Because if they aren't, then workarounds will be found. Usually at short notice, and by people who don't really know what the consequences might be.
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Monday 24th November 2025 08:55 GMT SVD_NL
Re: Important learning experience
Well, lesson not entirely learned, because they're still a bit stuck in their own cryptology bubble. They could've looked at the world around them and realised that if you're doing an election with possible conflicts of interest you could just get an independent party to conduct the election and verify the results.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
