A team of researchers have examined the source code published as part of the SwissPost e-voting system, provided by Scytl, and discovered a cryptographic trapdoor. If exploited, researchers say this could allow insiders who ran or implemented the election system to modify votes undetected. [...] In the SwissPost system, encrypted electronic votes need to be 'shuffled' to protect individual vote privacy. The authority who conducts the shuffle is supposed to provide a mathematical proof that no votes have been changed. This allows the election result to be verified. But the trapdoor found in this code allows an authority to produce a proof that seems to verify correctly actually alters votes. "The existence of a trapdoor is worrying," Ms Lewis said. "While nothing in our analysis suggests that this problem was introduced deliberately, its mere presence raises serious questions about the rest of the code." https://techxplore.com/news/2019-03-trapdoor-swissvote-election.html