What specific vulnerabilities were identified in Dominion Voting Systems after the 2020 election?

1. What the official advisories said: nine documented flaws

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an advisory derived from testing that enumerated multiple vulnerabilities in Dominion’s ImageCast X devices and related Democracy Suite components, describing authentication weaknesses and other software flaws and assigning at least one CVE (CVE‑2022‑1746) to an authentication forgery issue ^{[1] [5]}.

2. The most consequential technical findings

Independent researcher J. Alex Halderman and colleagues reported several striking technical problems: they demonstrated that votes encoded in barcode data could be altered, that some vulnerabilities could enable installation of malicious software given access to devices or the election management system (EMS), and that certain versions allowed an attacker to forge voter activation/authentication for a voting session ^{[2] [1] [3]}.

3. Ballot secrecy and “un-shuffling” privacy flaw

Beyond vote-alteration scenarios, Halderman’s team identified a privacy risk in certain Dominion ballot scanners that could “un‑shuffle” anonymized ballot data and potentially link human‑readable votes back to individual voters, undermining voter secrecy under some circumstances ^{[2] [6]}.

4. How an attacker would actually exploit the flaws — prerequisites matter

CISA and other technical assessments emphasized that many of the vulnerabilities required specific, non‑trivial preconditions to be exploited: temporary physical access to a machine, prior compromise or manipulation of files uploaded to ImageCast X devices, or access to the EMS that configures devices for an election — not simple remote attacks without access to systems or ballots ^{[5] [1]}.

5. Leaked software and operational breaches increased risk

The risk profile changed when full copies of Dominion EMS software and county data leaked after 2020 and were circulated publicly (including at a private event), giving would‑be attackers a “practice environment” and a roadmap for probing vulnerabilities that might not have been possible before the breach ^{[3] [7]}.

6. Assessment of actual exploitation and competing judgments

Multiple federal and independent assessments, including MITRE’s evaluation and CISA’s public statements, found no evidence that these vulnerabilities were exploited to alter election outcomes in 2020 and said layered operational and physical controls substantially mitigate risk when properly applied ^{[4] [1]}. Some officials, such as Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, characterized certain risks as theoretical, while Halderman and plaintiffs in litigation argued the flaws demonstrated real attack vectors that required remediation or replacement ^[2].

7. Patches, mitigations, and the policy fallout

Dominion reported it issued software patches addressing several vulnerabilities and CISA advised jurisdictions to apply updates, strengthen physical security and chain‑of‑custody procedures, disable certain features (e.g., “Unify Tabulator Security Keys”) and validate cryptographic hashes and paper‑record verification methods; state responses varied, with some jurisdictions replacing or postponing updates for political or logistical reasons ^{[1] [5] [2]}.

8. Bottom line — vulnerability versus proven compromise

The post‑2020 scrutiny did reveal concrete software and privacy vulnerabilities in Dominion equipment — ranging from authentication forgery and potential barcode tampering to ballot‑linkage privacy flaws and elevated risk after EMS leaks — but authoritative reviews uniformly reported no evidence that those specific flaws were used to change 2020 vote totals, while urging technical fixes, stronger operational controls, paper records, and audits to reduce future risk ^{[1] [4] [3]}.