Open your Diebold AccuVote-TS with a minibar key

Remember those guys from Princeton who recently dissected a Diebold voting machine and wrote a serious academic paper laying the smack downon our favorite shady e-voting company? The plot thickens with those Jersey brainiacs: after giving a presentation to some computer science colleagues last week, Prof. Ed Felten was approached by Chris Tengi, a member of the department's technical staff, who pointed out that the key that opens the AccuVote-TS voting machine is very similar to a key that he has at home. Tengi's key opened the voting machine, and upon further investigation, the Princeton posse discovered that both keys are actually a common office furniture type used for hotel minibars, electronic equipment and jukeboxes. Furthermore, said keys can easily be bought on eBay or from various online retailers. So, all you need to hack Diebold's crackerjack security is to spend a little cash on these keys, bring 'em to your next local election along with a cheap-o flash drive, and you can easily open the lock that houses that Diebold memory card while you're in the voting booth -- good times, hey? If your locality uses these machines, you may want to write your Congressional representative and your county authorities to alert them to this, erm, "feature" -- better yet, buy them one of these keys and send it along with your letter, inviting them to test it out for themselves!

[Via Boing Boing]

[Nate @ Sep 18th 2006 4:19PM]

But what exactly can you do once you get into the boxes: change votes, cast more than one vote...?

[Matt @ Sep 19th 2006 5:44PM]

You could go to a district that tends to have people who vote differently than you and remove/comprimise their votes. And then (if you get caught) you can spend the rest of your life in prison, because I am sure this is a federal crime. But, you could still do it, and who's going to catch you? You're along in this booth where no one is supposed to be able to see you.

[Ryan @ Sep 18th 2006 4:23PM]

What a load of crap. You have to know that these security flaws wern't accidentally overlooked, and we all know what party Diebold supports....

[disciple83 @ Sep 18th 2006 4:27PM]

depending on what you have on the flash drive, you can probably do a number of things: change votes, erase votes, cast more than one, change the names on the ballots, switch parties around, or copy all the information of all the voters registered in the database, maybe to lecture those who voted opposite your decision on the reasons why they suck for voting the way they did, at their own home, as a protest to the flaws of our voting systems.

[+ZERO+ @ Sep 18th 2006 4:28PM]

And thus is why we should resort to paper/pen method of voting... 1 count, no recounts, sucks if you lose, give it up!

[ruben @ Sep 18th 2006 4:32PM]

why buy em? just make a bump key cheaper, and theyre not hard to make

[Kevin @ Sep 18th 2006 5:10PM]

From my understanding, bump keys do not work in locks such as this, they are wafer locks. Bump keys work in pin/tumbler locks.

[John @ Sep 18th 2006 4:40PM]

More amusing would be to have somebody create a flash card image that could be used to change all the names of the candidates to cartoon characters, or other fictional characters, at some time later in the day. I'd love to see the faces of the election judges in the polling centres when people start reporting that the machine is asking them to vote for Mickey Mouse or Spiderman :-)

[Paul @ Sep 18th 2006 4:49PM]

Bump keys still require that you know a couple things.

First of all, you need to know what a bump key is.
Second you need to know how to use one.

Also, I may be wrong but from what I know of bump keys I expect people might be curious why there are banging noises coming from your voting box.

With this you just put in a key and turn... thats all, simple no noise, and ANYONE can do it, not just someone who knows about bump keys.

[DarkFader @ Sep 18th 2006 4:52PM]

It's not a damn safe. But a regular lock doesn't give much credibility. Perhaps the reasoning was to prevent looking for the correct key.
If at the very least the electronics is secure, there's no problem. The software for the optional flash slot might even have a digital signature check.

[thomas @ Sep 18th 2006 5:47PM]

All my security classes emphasized the fact that "locks only keep honest people honest"...Fort Knox was broken into: safes with four feet of steel walling, surrounded by six feet of cement STILL get broken into. You cannot keep out someone who wants to get in. And if they happen to have the Governments "backdoor key", the sky's the limit!

Suckers!

Hope your votes count!

[Dp462090 @ Sep 19th 2006 8:05AM]

"Fort Knox was broken into"
What? Fort Knox has never been broken into, no ones ever tried.

See #4: http://www.radclifftourism.org/faqs.shtml

[Sean @ Sep 18th 2006 5:49PM]

For those of you wondering what you can do once you get in, click on that "Princeton" link in the first sentence, go the article, and watch the video.

[Rich @ Oct 9th 2006 12:37PM]

A mini bar key?

Well that explains Ted Kennedy...