In recent days, thanks to the cooperation of the services, a group of saboteurs was defeated. Their goal was to extort information, to engage in individual and institutional blackmail and, in fact, to wage cyber warfare, Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said at a press conference.
During a press conference related to cybersecurity, the Minister of Digital Affairs stressed that only “in the first half of 2024, more than 400 thousand “cyber attack incidents” were reported and approximately 100,000 were carried out. service activities related to identifying those who actually indicated attacks. This shows that the number (of incidents – editor’s note) has increased by 100% year on year. – he said. He added that “370,000 incidents were reported throughout 2023.”
In recent days, thanks to the cooperation of services related to the Coordinating Minister for Services and services involved in the Ministry of Digitalization managed to break up a group of saboteurs who had specific objectives in Poland and was addressed from a specific location – Gawkowski informed.
He said that The purpose of the activities of the Belarusian and Russian services in Poland in the field of cyber security was to extort information, conduct individual and institutional blackmail and conduct de facto cyber wars.. It all started with POLADA (Polish Anti-Doping Agency, which was hacked in August – ed. note), which was an element of a broader operational game of services, whose task was to develop, on its basis, input vectors for other Polish institutions – those of local government and those at the level of state-owned companies that are related to the area of security – said the Minister of Digital Affairs.
He assured that “all these institutions were informed by the services”. They are subject to operational procedures, but the operational objective defined by the adversaries, namely to enter, extort data and then blackmail, has been disrupted. – Gawkowski said. As he said, this is a huge success for the Homeland Security Agency and the Scientific and Academic Informatics Network, in cooperation with the military services.
He explained that the aim of the attacks was to cause political, military and economic paralysis of the State.
He said that “the services managed by the minister (Tomasz Siemoniak – editor’s note) and those cooperating within the Ministry of Digitalization meet every week in joint cybersecurity operations centers.” There, coordination has been taken to a higher level.
He added that “incidents like those involving PAP are carried out in real time.” In cooperation with the minister, he saw that in the case of the PAP the reactions were within a few minutes – he added.
