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Black Box Voting Report on Diebold Security Issues

5-11-06: Three-level security flaws found in Diebold touch-screens. Critical Security Alert: Diebold TSx and TS6 voting systems by Harri Hursti, for Black Box Voting, Inc. (12 pages, PDF)

  • “Due to the nature of this report it is distributed in two different versions. Details of the attack are only in the restricted distribution version considered to be confidential. This document describes several security issues with the Diebold electronic voting terminals TSx and TS6. These touch-pad terminals are widely used in US and Canadian elections and are among the most widely used touch pad voting systems in North America. Several vulnerabilities are described in this report. One of them, however, seems to enable a
    malicious person to compromise the equipment even years before actually using the exploit, possibly leaving the voting terminal incurably compromised. These architectural defects are not in the election-processing system itself. However, they compromise the underlying platform and therefore cast a serious question over the integrity of the vote. These exploits can be used to affect the trustworthiness of the system or to selectively disenfranchise groups of voters through denial of service.”
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  • Press release, California first in nation to implement electronic voting reform, May 4, 2006: “All 58 California counties are on track to deploy new or upgraded voting equipment that guarantees every ballot cast will be backed up on paper that voters can verify before leaving the polls. Fourteen counties acquired over 40,000 electronic voting machines in recent years, all of which are being replaced or retrofitted with printers in time for the June election, making California the first state in the nation to reform its electronic voting systems after widespread deployment of paperless e-voting machines.”

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