Tue, 25 Nov 2025

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 Cryptology firm cancels elections after losing encryption key

The International Association for Cryptologic Research - created to study secure communication - said it was an "honest human mistake."

* The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) had to cancel its leadership election results due to an official losing their encrypted key.
* An electronic voting system was used, requiring three members with parts of the encrypted key to access the results.
* One trustee lost their private key in an "honest but unfortunate human mistake", making it impossible to decrypt and reveal the final results.
* The IACR will rerun the election and implement new safeguards to prevent similar mistakes from happening again, including a 2-out-of-3 threshold mechanism for managing private keys.
* Voting has been renewed and will run until December 20.
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