US Election Assistance Commission - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines Vote
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Section CommentsGeneral CommentsGlossary Comments
 
Name :   Hugh Gallagher
Organization :   Election System & Management Services
Post Date :   9/30/2005

Section Comments
Section :  6
Page no. :  
Line no.:  
Comment :  The proposed voting system standards, Section 6.0 “Security” call for
the use of the Advanced Encryption Standard, or Federal Information
Processing Standard 197. Previous encryption standards for wireless
relied on the Digital Encryption Standard know as DES, which was
based on a 56-bit encryption standard. This standard remained secure
for about 20 years’. But eventually, it became practical to mount a keyexhaustion
attack, commonly referred to as “brute-force” to break the
code. Brute force is a method in which attackers continually try ALL
possible key values to break the encryption. But the Advanced
Encryption Standard has a much larger key size – barring any attacks
against AES that are faster than key exhaustion, and even with future advances in technology, AES has the potential to remain secure for will
beyond 20 years’.

[Statements submitted at EAC public hearing, July 28, 2005, Pasadena]