German intelligence agencies have warned that a combination of fake news and Russian interference through hacking and misinformation could disrupt next year’s federal elections in a way that mirrors what happened during the US presidential contest, an official told BuzzFeed News.



The concerns add to those expressed by top US, EU, and NATO officials about Russia’s actions in Germany — and across the continent — in what they say is an attempt to destabilise chancellor Angela Merkel at home and abroad.

A German intelligence official told BuzzFeed News the agency could not rule out a repeat of the type of interference that followed the hack on the Democratic National Committee's systems in the US. German officials have no idea how much and what kind of information was stolen during a hack on the German parliament’s network last year.

They said the group behind the hack, Sofacy/APT 28, is “steered by Russia". The same group, which is also known as Fancy Bear, allegedly hacked the DNC in the US. Hackers, also suspected to have Russian connections, have also targeted Germany’s political parties, including Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Officials said they were concerned networks of government ministries were vulnerable to attacks.

On Tuesday, the head of the US National Security Agency described WikiLeaks's dumping of hacked Democratic party emails as "a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect".

The German official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were “alarmed” by the volume of fake news on social media, and that it was something they were monitoring. BuzzFeed News analysis published this week revealed that fake political news outperformed real news on Facebook in the final stages of the US election campaign.

In a speech last month in Munich, Merkel said search engines and social media were distorting people’s perception of reality and that this would threaten democracy. She called on sites to be more transparent about their algorithms.

On Wednesday, Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the German domestic BfV intelligence agency, said the agency was worried about the possibility of Russia using misinformation to disrupt next year’s election.

“In Europe, Russia’s main enemy is Merkel,” an EU diplomat told BuzzFeed News. “Russia sees itself at war with the West, information is a part of its army,” the official added.



Earlier this year, reports of the alleged rape of a 13-year-old Russian-speaking girl, supposedly by Middle Eastern migrants, sparked outrage in Germany and Russia. The story, which was prominently covered by Russian media, claimed a girl from a Russian immigrant family had been abducted on her way to school and gang-raped by "southern-looking" asylum-seekers.

But the allegations of rape were not true, as Berlin's police chief made clear in a statement.

Nevertheless the story was widely shared on social media, and Russian migrants in Germany took to the streets to protest alongside local far-right and anti-Islam groups who helped to organise the protest. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the German government of “sweeping the case under the carpet”.