Polish authorities take down Belarusian and Russian cyber-espionage group

Polish authorities successfully dismantled a cyber-espionage group linked to Belarusian and Russian intelligence services, which had been conducting malicious activities in Poland, reported Polish Minister of Digitization Krzysztof Gawkowski on  Monday (9 September).

Speaking at a press conference on cyber security, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski, said that the cooperation of several services made it possible to take down the cyber criminal group.

"In the last few days, thanks to the cooperation of the services connected to the Ministerial Coordinator of Services and the services connected to the Ministry of Digitalisation, it was possible to dismantle a group of saboteurs who had specific targets in Poland and who were operating from a specific location," said Gawkowski.

The disbanded group had conducted a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign, starting with the hacking of the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

According to Gawkowski, the group's ultimate goal was to penetrate other Polish government institutions and state-owned companies, particularly those involved in national security.

He added that in the first six months of 2024 already "more than 400,000 incidents related to cyber attacks were reported."

"This represents a 100 per cent increase in the number of incidents compared to the previous year," he said, adding that 370,000 incidents were reported in all of 2023.

"This is a great success for the Internal Security Agency and the Scientific-Acharian Computer Network, with the cooperation of the military services, of course," Gawkowski concluded.

Poland and its media are no strangers to computer attacks from Russia, especially during the election period.

In May, the Polish government linked to a Russian cyber attack a false story published by the state news agency PAP, claiming that Poles were being mobilised to fight in Ukraine.

At the time, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the hacking was part of Russia's attempts to destabilise the European Union, ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections.

Poland, however, is not the first EU country whose news agency has been hacked in recent months.

In April, hackers attacked the website of the Czech public news agency CTK, publishing two fake texts claiming that Czech intelligence had prevented an attack on Slovakia's president-elect Peter Pellegrini.

Czech police and the Czech Security Information Service are still investigating the case.

Prague recalled its Russian ambassador in May, over recent repeated cyber attacks by a group said to be linked to Russian military intelligence.

Also in May, Germany temporarily recalled its Russian ambassador, after members of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party were targeted, in what Berlin said was a state-sponsored Russian cyber attack.

Poland has been a staunch supporter of neighbouring Ukraine, since the beginning of Russia's invasion in February 2022, and is the leading country transferring Western weapons and munitions to Kyiv.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]