Poland: groups from Russia, Belarus behind cyberattack on Tusk’s party

Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digitalization Krzysztof Gawkowski said that Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party has suffered a cyberattack by groups from Russia and Belarus.

He made this statement the day after the incident, on April 3, as reported by RMF24.

According to Gawkowski, groups from the Russian Federation and Belarus carried out the cyberattack on Civic Platform on April 2.

He emphasized that the attack was organized and planned and stressed that the state services are taking it extremely seriously.

“We have confirmation that this attack was not accidental. Such an incident can affect any political party, any state institution,” Gawkowski said.

The deputy prime minister added that “Russia wants to steal the elections from Poland and Poles, but they will not succeed.”

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the attack on the PO’s IT system on Wednesday. “Cyberattack on the Civic Platform’s IT system. Foreign interference in the elections has begun. The services point to an eastern trace,” he wrote on the X platform.

In recent years, Poland, which has been actively supporting Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, has been the target of several massive cyberattacks.

Poland’s state-run PAP agency suffered a hack last year, and the Polish Space Agency was the target of a cyber incident earlier in March.

The Polish government has previously said that it is working to strengthen online security and is in talks with social media platforms, expecting cyberattacks to intensify before the presidential election.