Britain, Germany brace for pre-election cyber attacks

By Alice Tidey — Britain and Germany were already beefing up cyber security ahead of key elections even before the hacking attack on France’s Emmanuel Macron, months after Hillary Clinton was caught in the online crosshairs. Clinton recently reiterated her view that Russian hacking of her campaign’s emails was partly to blame for her defeat in last year’s US presidential election to Donald Trump. In France, going to the polls on Sunday in a presidential run-off election between Macron and far-right Marine Le Pen, hacking reared its ugly head at the 11th hour.

Shortly before midnight on Friday, frontrunner Macron was the victim of a “massive and coordinated hacking attack”. His staff described the release of internal documents, including thousands of emails and accounting documents, as an attempt at “democratic destabilisation”. Taking note of the events in the US and in France, intelligence authorities in Britain and Germany are taking steps to prevent cyber attacks ahead of their own hotly-contested elections. Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NSCS) said it was on “high alert” the day after Prime Minister Theresa May surprised the country last month by calling for a general election to be held on June 8.

The NCSC convened the UK’s main political parties to a “technical seminar” in March to provide them with practical steps to reduce the risk as well as advise on incident management. German authorities have taken similar steps ahead of September’s general election. Arne Schoenbohm, president of Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) said back in March that government networks were being attacked “on a daily basis”. She said the BSI had approached election officials and political parties to discuss how they could protect themselves.