German spy chief says Russian hackers could disrupt elections
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Hans-Georg Maaßen, president of the domestic BfV intelligence agency, said in an interview 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 had been carrying out attacks on computer systems in Germany which, as far as his agency had been able to ascertain, were aimed at comprehensive strategic data gathering.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/german-spy-chief-russian-hackers-could-disrupt-elections-bruno-kahl-cyber-attacks
Blunt warnings from German officials
In a
detailed report released in April, the European Council on Foreign Relations bluntly warned that Moscow's different intelligence services "conduct active measures aimed at subverting and destabilizing European governments
and attacks on political enemies."
The goal appears to be to weaken politicians Moscow does not like in a bid to end sanctions, sow discord throughout NATO and the EU, to increase distrust of liberal democracies generally and to challenge U.S. influence on the continent.
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The head of Germany's domestic intelligence service (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen, insists Russia has been actively cyber-targeting German infrastructure and institutions for at least eight years and has "shown a willingness to carry out sabotage."
He has said that the Russian group that hacked the files of the U.S. Democrats was also responsible for stealing classified material from Germany's parliament in 2015.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-cyber-warfare-election-hack-1.3896613
If you read the links above you see that the head of the German spy agency is attributing the hack in the US to Russia and trying to prevent their having been hacked from influencing Germany's upcoming election.
The report from April (linked above in the excerpt) from the ECRF was pretty interesting.