Applying a Zero-Knowledge Watermarking Protocol to Secure Elections
Scott A. Craver, Nicholas Rosbrook · 2023
Zero-knowledge protocols for digital watermarking allow a copyright holder to prove that a signal is hidden in a cover without revealing the signal or where it is. This same approach can be applied outside of watermarking to other problems where anonymity is required, and in particular to secure elections. We outline steganographic zero-knowledge protocols---proving in zero knowledge the existence of a hidden object in a cover---and adapt them to prove that selected ballot values must exist within a volume of anonymized voter receipts. We also improve the space efficiency of such protocols by employing camouflaged elliptic curve cryptography.