https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/online-vulnerable-experts-find-nearly-three-dozen-u-s-voting-n1112436

'Online and vulnerable': Experts find nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to internet

A team of election security experts used a “Google for servers” to challenge claims that voting machines do not connect to the internet and found some did.

The three largest voting manufacturing companies — Election Systems &Software, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic — have acknowledged they all put modems in some of their tabulators and scanners.The reason? So that unofficial election results can more quickly be relayed to the public. Those modems connect to cell phone networks, which, in turn, are connected to the internet.

The largest manufacturer of voting machines, ES&S, told NBC News their systems are protected by firewalls and are not on the “public internet.” But both Skoglund and Andrew Appel, a Princeton computer science professor and expert on elections, said such firewalls can and have been breached.

“AT&T and Verizon and so on try and protect as best they can the security of their phone network from the rest of the internet, but it’s still part of the internet,” Appel explained. “There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.”

The 35 systems Skoglund’s team found represent a fraction of total voting systems nationwide, though he believes they only captured a portion of the systems that are or have been online. Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable.

For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel.

“Once a hacker starts talking to the voting machine through the modem, the hacker cannot just change these unofficial election results, they can hack the software in the voting machine and make it cheat in future elections,” he said.