Russian hacking Russian gov. hackers may disrupt Germany’s 2017 elections: Germany’s intel chief

Published 29 November 2016

The Russian government’s broad hacking campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and help Donald Trump become the U.S. next president may well be the template Russia is following in the run-up to next year’s German general election. Russia has actively – both overtly and covertly — supported right-wing, ethno-nationalist, populist, and proto-Fascist parties like Front National in France, Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, and Jobbik in Hungary. These parties share not only anti-immigrant policies – but they are also fiercely anti-EU and want to distance their countries from NATO. One of the major themes in the public rallies – and political platform – of the German far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Pegida movement is that the influence of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia in Germany would be a welcome alternative to the imperial designs of the United States and Brussels.

The Russian government’s broad hacking campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and help Donald Trump become the U.S. next president may well be the template Russia is following in the run-up to next year’s German general election.

Bruno Kahl, director of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, has warned that the 2017general election in Germany could be targeted by Russian government hackers aiming to spread disinformation, raise questions about the integrity of the German electoral process, and undermining German democratic institutions.

Kahl said Russia was likely behind attempts during the U.S. presidential campaign to interfere with the vote.

“We have evidence that cyber-attacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit political uncertainty,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in his first interview since he was appointed as director five months ago.

“The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process as such, regardless of who that ends up helping. We have indications that [the attacks] come from the Russian region.

“Being able to attribute it to a state agent is technically difficult but there is some evidence that this is at least tolerated or desired by the state.”

Kahl said his organization’s analysts suspect that the Russian government’s cyberattacks were at least partially motivated by the desire to demonstrate technical prowess. “The traces that are left behind in the Internet create an impression of someone wanting to demonstrate what they are capable of,” he said.

The BBC notes that Kahl is the latest in a series of senior German officials expressing their concerns over Russian interference in German politics, particularly – as was also the case in the U.S.– by actively spreading of fake news stories, or disinformation.

Hans-Georg Maaßen, director of the domestic Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) intelligence agency, said that cyberspace had become “a place of hybrid warfare” in which Russia was a key player. “More recently, we see the willingness of Russian intelligence to carry out sabotage,” he said.

Maaßen said Russian secret services – especially the FSB and the GRU, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency and military intelligence agency, respectively — had been carrying out attacks on computer systems in Germany which were “aimed at comprehensive strategic data gathering.”

He added that only when people were confronted with the fact that the information they were receiving was untrue would “the toxic lies [spread by Russia] lose their effectiveness.”