arXiv subjects

Robert Riemann

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Riemann.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2017

Distributed Random Process for a Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Lottery

Most online lotteries today fail to ensure the verifiability of the random process and rely on a trusted third party. This issue has received little attention since the emergence of distributed protocols like Bitcoin that demonstrated the potential of protocols with no trusted third party. We argue that the security requirements of online lotteries are similar to those of online voting, and propose a novel distributed online lottery protocol that applies techniques developed for voting applications to an existing lottery protocol. As a result, the protocol is scalable, provides efficient verification of the random process and does not rely on a trusted third party nor on assumptions of bounded computational resources. An early prototype confirms the feasibility of our approach.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2017

Secure and Trustable Distributed Aggregation based on Kademlia

Aggregation of values that need to be kept confidential while guaranteeing the robustness of the process and the correctness of the result is required in an increasing number of applications. We propose an aggregation algorithm, which supports a large spectrum of potential applications including complex voting protocols. It relies on the distributed hash table Kademlia, used in BitTorrent, for pseudonymous communication between randomly predetermined peers to ensure a high degree of confidentiality which does not solely relies on cryptography. The distribution of data and computation limits the potential for data breaches, and reduces the need for institutional trust. Experimental results confirm the complexity of O(n) for n peers allowing for large-scale applications.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2017

Distributed Protocols at the Rescue for Trustworthy Online Voting

While online services emerge in all areas of life, the voting procedure in many democracies remains paper-based as the security of current online voting technology is highly disputed. We address the issue of trustworthy online voting protocols and recall therefore their security concepts with its trust assumptions. Inspired by the Bitcoin protocol, the prospects of distributed online voting protocols are analysed. No trusted authority is assumed to ensure ballot secrecy. Further, the integrity of the voting is enforced by all voters themselves and without a weakest link, the protocol becomes more robust. We introduce a taxonomy of notions of distribution in online voting protocols that we apply on selected online voting protocols. Accordingly, blockchain-based protocols seem to be promising for online voting due to their similarity with paper-based protocols.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2013

Evaluation of nitrogen- and silicon-vacancy defect centres as single photon sources in quantum key distribution

We demonstrate a quantum key distribution (QKD) testbed for room temperature single photon sources based on defect centres in diamond. A BB84 protocol over a short free-space transmission line is implemented. The performance of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) as well as silicon-vacancy defect (SiV) centres is evaluated and an extrapolation for next-generation sources with enhanced efficiency is discussed.

quant-ph↗