Gee Ed, get with it. That reports been out for at least a month!

John Harvey

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Ed Leafe
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 6:05 PM
To: ProFox Mailing List
Subject: [OT] Diebold voting machines

...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




[excessive quoting removed by server]

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