Russian hackers have stepped up sabotage attempts against Polish critical infrastructure, with hospitals and city water systems among the targets. Poland now faces between 20 and 50 cyberattacks daily amid heightened tensions with Moscow, according to a government minister. In response, Warsaw has announced plans to raise its cybersecurity budget to a record €1 billion this year.
Dariusz Standerski, deputy minister for digital affairs, told the Financial Times that Poland was facing between 20 and 50 attempts to damage critical infrastructure every day, most of which are thwarted. But a few cyber attacks, “mostly” targeting hospitals, have been successful, he said, with two or three breaches forcing healthcare facilities to suspend operations for some hours. The hackers have also managed to obtain medical data, he added.
A Russian-backed hacking attempt last month aimed to shut down the water supply of a major city, in one of the most significant hacking operations since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Standerski said.
The deputy minister did not want to specify where the attack occurred, citing security concerns, but noted that it was in one of Poland’s 10 largest cities. The perpetrators managed to infiltrate the facility’s IT network, he said, but were stopped before they could turn off the taps for the city’s residents.
The government’s response combines emergency funding and longer-term measures. Standerski said the government was allocating €80 million this month to strengthen the cyber defences of water management systems, as part of a broader effort to secure public infrastructure, including systems used by its 2,400 local administrations. He welcomed the rare cross-party consensus behind the initiative in the country’s highly polarised politics.
The latest spending bill will increase this year’s cybersecurity budget to €1 billion from €600 million in 2024.
Polish officials have identified that the country is the most frequent target of Russian cyber attacks within the EU, even as Poland fends off some 99 per cent of these attempts.
Furthermore, Standerski said that over the past year, Poland had recorded up to 30 jamming incidents within a short radius of Kaliningrad. Western intelligence services also believe Russia was responsible for jamming the GPS signal of a plane carrying Grant Shapps, then U.K. defence secretary, on his way back from Poland in March 2024. Polish authorities do not believe that Russia is targeting specific aircraft, but is rather aiming for general disruption. “We see that sometimes it’s just a noise within the signal, but sometimes there is no signal at all,” Standerski said.
In August, Poland foiled a significant Russian-backed cyberattack that attempted to disrupt the water supply of one of the country’s ten largest cities, marking one of the most serious incidents since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The digital affairs minister said Poland faces around 300 cyberattacks daily, with officials accusing Russian intelligence of orchestrating sabotage operations designed to strain Polish-Ukrainian relations, including the vandalism of World War II memorials.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that Moscow is combining cyberwarfare, provocations, and political infiltration in a broader effort to destabilize Poland.
