In response to last week’s cyberattacks in Ukraine, Poland on Tuesday raised its nationwide cybersecurity terror threat, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
The Polish government’s cybersecurity commissioner, Janusz Cieszyński, told reporters that under the alert level, which is in place until 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, all institutions and companies should update their systems and software.
They should “secure themselves, their infrastructure and users against possible effects caused by the software which was employed in the attacks in Ukraine,” Cieszyński said on Wednesday, as quoted by the IAR news agency.
For security reasons, the Polish government has not disclosed which of Poland’s Ukraine-based institutions were affected by last week's cyberattack, reporters were told.
Cieszyński added that as of Wednesday, no similar hacking assaults had been recorded in Poland.
Cyberattack on Ukraine
The cyberattack against Kyiv began in the early hours of Friday, January 14, and hit around 70 government websites, the Reuters news agency reported.
Hackers posted disinformation messages in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish, as well as cutting off access to a mobile application that offers citizens digital versions of official documents such as ID cards.
According to Ukrainian and Polish security services, the attack was most likely carried out by Russia, the IAR news agency reported.
Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs said that the new alarm level in the country "means that the public administration will be obliged to conduct increased monitoring of the security of information and communications technology (ICT) systems.”
Among other measures, Poland’s public institutions will monitor and verify if there have been breaches in the security of electronic communications, the ministry added.
(pm/gs)
Source: IAR, Reuters