...can be opened with a hotel mini-bar key!
<http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064>
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The access panel door on a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine — the
door that protects the memory card that stores the votes, and is the
main barrier to the injection of a virus — can be opened with a
standard key that is widely available on the Internet.
On Wednesday we did a live demo for our Princeton Computer Science
colleagues of the vote-stealing software described in our paper and
video. Afterward, Chris Tengi, a technical staff member, asked to
look at the key that came with the voting machine. He noticed an
alphanumeric code printed on the key, and remarked that he had a key
at home with the same code on it. The next day he brought in his key
and sure enough it opened the voting machine.
This seemed like a freakish coincidence — until we learned how common
these keys are.
Chris’s key was left over from a previous job, maybe fifteen years
ago. He said the key had opened either a file cabinet or the access
panel on an old VAX computer. A little research revealed that the
exact same key is used widely in office furniture, electronic
equipment, jukeboxes, and hotel minibars. It’s a standard part, and
like most standard parts it’s easily purchased on the Internet. We
bought several keys from an office furniture key shop — they open the
voting machine too. We ordered another key on eBay from a jukebox
supply shop. The keys can be purchased from many online merchants.
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-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com
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