Opinion Forgot password? So do cryptographers

Long before blockchain and the internet, before computers, perhaps since people began prizing their possessions and privacy, they have suffered from a near-universal anxiety. Information, both in itself and as a means to greater treasure, is a source of wealth and power: The pirate’s treasure map, the spy’s cypher, or even the hiding place of a teenager’s diary — there have been cryptographers galore, each in their own way, protecting something. In the information age, the task is all the more complicated: Scores of passwords, which to be “strong” must fulfil a host of criteria that make the resultant gobbledygook all but impossible to remember. But the forgetful everyman need not feel too bad.

Last week, the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR) was forced to cancel the elections for the posts of four directors and three officers. No, there were no “fake voters” or booth capturing. The problem was that the professional decryptors could not read the result: A trustee lost one of the three digital keys that unlocked the “ballot box”. Since the system is foolproof, the ICAR is heading for fresh polls.

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Advanced computers, software, and minds given to puzzles can make information “hack-proof”. But as espionage novelists have long known, there is always the Human Factor. People are still fallible — and hackable. And if the trustee of the leading cryptographic research body can misplace a digital key, perhaps regular folk can be forgiven for locking themselves out of their car or home.