The president of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service said he expects Russian cyberattacks to interfere with upcoming electoral processes across Europe, but particularly in Germany, according to the BBC.
Bruno Kahl, whose agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is responsible for foreign intelligence, told German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, that his staff was aware of cyberattacks intended to cause "political uncertainty."
"Europe is the focus of this attempted disruption, and Germany in particular," he told the widely circulated South German daily newspaper.
Kahl's comments echo accusations Chancellor Angela Merkel made earlier this month. "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," she told reporters at a press conference in Berlin.
German officials earlier in the year pointed fingers at a cybergang dubbed Fancy Bear, believed to be an arm of the Russian state, for cyberattacks on the nation's networks, as well as incursions into Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party.
More recently, following a cyberattack last week that shut down broadband service for nearly a million Deutsche Telekom customers, Merkel sought to reassure her nation that such attacks "are now part of daily life and we must learn to cope with them." The source of that attack is still unknown.
