A leading international authority in cryptology has been forced to cancel its leadership election after an official lost the encrypted key required to unlock the results.

Just to be clear, we’re not looking to dunk on The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), but it’s a story that highlights how even the most robust and elegant cryptographic systems remain susceptible to human error.

The IACR, considered one of the most influential global voices in encryption and secure communications, confirmed that it is voiding the 2025 election after a trustee irretrievably lost their private key, making it technically impossible to decrypt the final tally.

The organisation uses an electronic voting system that requires three independent trustees, each holding a portion of encrypted key material, to jointly decrypt election results.

All three decryption shares are required to access the outcome – pretty solid way of doing things, it would seem.

However, while two trustees successfully uploaded their share of the encrypted material, a third did not, preventing the system from completing the process.

In a statement, the IACR said one trustee had lost their key due to “an honest but unfortunate human mistake”, leaving the organisation with no viable option but to cancel the election entirely. The association added that it was “deeply sorry” for the incident, which it said it takes “very seriously”.

The IACR, a global non-profit organisation founded in 1982 to “further research” in cryptology, opened voting for three director and four officer positions on October 17th, with the process closing on November 16th. The election was conducted using an open source electronic voting system called Helios, a browser-based platform that relies on cryptography to encrypt votes and preserve secrecy.

Three members of the association were appointed as independent trustees, each responsible for holding a third of the encrypted key material required to unlock the results. However, the system’s strict cryptographic safeguards, designed to prevent collusion or unauthorised access, ultimately made the situation unrecoverable once one trustee’s key was lost.

The organisation said the loss of the key left it “technically impossible” to obtain or verify the final outcome, forcing the cancellation of the results.

In a statement following the incident, the IACR said: “This announcement is in connection with the recent IACR 2025 election conducted using the Helios electronic voting system. Regrettably, we have encountered a fatal technical problem that prevents us from concluding the election and accessing the final tally.

“For this election and in accordance with the bylaws of the IACR, the three members of the IACR 2025 Election Committee acted as independent trustees, each holding a portion of the cryptographic key material required to jointly decrypt the results.

“This aspect of Helios’ design ensures that no two trustees could collude to determine the outcome of an election or the contents of individual votes on their own: all trustees must provide their decryption shares.

“Unfortunately, one of the three trustees has irretrievably lost their private key, an honest but unfortunate human mistake, and therefore cannot compute their decryption share. As a result, Helios is unable to complete the decryption process, and it is technically impossible for us to obtain or verify the final outcome of this election.”

The organisation stated that the failure is visible on the public Helios election page, where two trustees are listed as having uploaded their decryption material while one has not. It added that this transparency allows the issue to be independently verified as arising from the system’s strict cryptographic requirements.

Following what it described as careful consideration, the IACR confirmed that the only responsible option was to void the election and restart the process entirely. The new election will run from 21 November to 20 December, using the same electoral roll and the same list of candidates.

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The association said voters would receive a new Helios notification inviting them to participate, noting that those who had opted out of system emails would need to re-enable communications in order to take part.

Further in the statement, the IACR said: “We are deeply sorry for this failure and for the disruption it has caused; this situation should not have happened, and we take it very seriously. We respectfully ask for your understanding and patience while we remedy the problem and ensure that the renewed process is as smooth, secure, and transparent as possible.”

It added that safeguards are now being introduced to prevent a recurrence, including the adoption of a 2-out-of-3 threshold mechanism for the management of private keys and clearer written procedures for trustees to follow. It also confirmed that, following the resignation of trustee Moti Yung, he will be replaced by Michel Abdalla for the rerun of the election.