Russian hackingGermany worries about Russian cyberattacks influencing German election

Published 9 November 2016

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Russia could launch a cyberattack campaign in an effort to influence Germany’s general elections next year. “We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with Internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” the German chancellor said. Hans-George Maassen, the director of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a formal warning earlier this year, saying that that the German government, business, educational facilities, and critical infrastructure were under “permanent threat” from Russian cyberattacks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Russia could launch a cyberattack campaign in an effort to influence Germany’s general elections next year.

The U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, and DHS have identified Russian government hackers as being behind the cyberattacks on the computer systems of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. The immediate goal of Russia’s cyber campaign was to weaken Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. The long-term goal has been to undermine the American political system, discredit the integrity of the election, and lend support to conspiracy theories about “rigged” elections “stolen” by “international bankers” colluding with Clinton.

“We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with Internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” the German chancellor said at a press conference alongside the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, on Tuesday. Dealing with that was already “a daily task,” she told reporters in Berlin. “So it may be that this could also play a role during the election campaign.”

The Daily Mail reports that Merkel’s comments came in response to a question about whether Germany could experience Russian government hacking attacks similar to those targeting the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party.

Earlier this year Germany’s domestic secret service accused Russia of a series of cyber-spying and cyber-sabotage attacks on Germany’s political institutions, including a massive cyberattack by Russian government hackers on the German lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, and cyberattacks on the headquarters of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

Hans-George Maassen, the director of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a formal warning earlier this year, saying that that the German government, business, educational facilities, and critical infrastructure were under “permanent threat” (ständige Bedrohung) from Russian cyberattacks.

Germany will hold its next elections in September 2017.

Russia has already carried out a broad information – and disinformation — campaign focusing on Germany’s problems with integrating refugees. Experts say that the goals of Russia’s hacking and disinformation campaign in Germany are similar to the goals of the Russian hacking and disinformation campaign in the United States. In Germany, the Russian campaign helped increase support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a populist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, euroskeptic party with a strong racist appeal.

The Russian efforts on behalf of the AfD in Germany and Trump in the United States are in line with Putin’s policy of supporting right-wing, ethno-nationalist, and populist 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.

Putin is probably correct in his assessment that strengthening these parties and movements would not only weaken NATO and the EU – but also weaken each of the countries in which these parties and movements are active by deepening internal divisions and acrimony along ethnic and religious lines, inflaming resentment and anger, and challenging the credibility of these countries’ democratic institutions.

Moscow’s course is designed to weaken the EU as a whole in order to improve its chances of realizing its economic and security agenda in Europe,” the Berlin-based SWP think tank said in a Russian foreign policy report in July.