Poland blames Russia as cyberattacks on critical systems rise

Poland's critical infrastructure has been subject to a growing number of cyberattacks by Russia, whose military intelligence, has trebled its resources for such action against Poland this year, the country's digital affairs minister told Reuters.

Of the 170,000 cyber incidents that have been identified in the first three quarters of this year, a significant portion has been attributed to Russian actors, while other cases are financially motivated, involving theft or other forms of cybercrime, Krzysztof Gawkowski said.

He said Poland is a subject to between 2,000 and 4,000 incidents a day and that 700 to 1,000 are "taken up by us, meaning they posed a real threat or had the potential to cause serious problems", he said.

Foreign adversaries are now expanding their focus beyond water and sewage systems to the energy sector, he said.

He did not give exact figures for Russian activity and could not comment on Russia's methods in Poland's cyberspace. The information on Russia's increasing involvement had come from intelligence from Poland's intelligence agencies.

Russia has consistently denied claims of such activity. The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately return a request for comment.

Officials in Warsaw have said Poland, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, is Russia's main target among NATO states and has accused the Kremlin of repeated efforts to undermine national security.

"Russian activity is the most severe because it targets critical infrastructure essential to maintaining normal life," Gawkowski said.

Along with the Russian drone attack on September 10, there was a correlated cyberattack on Poland, the largest since 2022, when the war broke out in Ukraine, he said.

Although the government saw from the early hours of the night that the drone attack was coming from Russia, false claims that Ukraine sent the drones to start war, flooded Polish cyberspace, Gawkowski said.

He added that to do this, bots that had remained dormant for months, even years were reactivated.

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