Germany intends to focus on cybersecurity ahead of parliamentary elections to 2017 because of fears the intervention of the “Russian hackers”, said Wednesday the Agency Bloomberg.

“Evidence of attempts to influence elections increases (from Russia – Interfax). We expect another jump in the number of cyber attacks before the elections”, – quotes Agency the head of the Federal service for protection of Constitution of Germany Hans-Georg Maasen.

As noted by Bloomberg in Berlin fear that Moscow will try to strengthen the position of the conservative party “Alternative for Germany” and set up 2.5 million Russian-speaking citizens of Germany against the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who intends to stand for the post for the fourth time.

“Cybersecurity is a priority, and Chancellor Angela Merkel refers to it very seriously”, – said the head of the Federal office for information security (BSI) Arne Senbon .

In particular, in the framework of increasing the level of cybersecurity BSI this year, will hire 180 new employees – from programmers to lawyers and will form a special team who will fix the consequences of hacker attacks. In addition, in may BSI representatives held talks with counterparts from France, which was engaged in protection against cyber attacks on the campaign of the current President of Emmanuel Macron.

Also led by Angela Merkel of the Christian democratic Union proposed to elaborate and adopt a law that would allow German security professionals in the event of an attack from hackers to perform similar actions in return.

Bloomberg also notes that “representatives of the key parties are so concerned about the potential interference of Russia (in the election – if) that have agreed not to use a possible leak of information for political purposes.”

Parliamentary elections in Germany scheduled for September 24, 2017.FS