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Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Times
We face 300 Russian cyberattacks a day, says Poland's deputy PM
Russian intelligence has tripled its cyberattacks on Poland this year and Warsaw is steeling itself for an attempt to shut down the water supply or the power grid, the country's deputy prime minister has said. In an interview with The Times, Krzysztof Gawkowski, who also runs the digital ministry, said there had been more than 100,000 attempts to compromise Poland's computer networks last year, equating to roughly 300 a day. In recent months, security agencies from the US, the UK and more than a dozen other countries have warned that the Russian state and its proxies are stepping up an already intense 'cyber campaign' against western targets involved in providing aid to Ukraine. Poland, the primary logistics hub for these supplies and one of Moscow's staunchest opponents, is right in the digital firing line. Pro-Russian hackers attacked the websites of the parties in its ruling coalition on the eve of the Polish presidential election three months ago, in what was characterised as an 'unprecedented' attempt to interfere in the country's democracy. The heaviest assaults have been orchestrated by the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, which presides over an extensive network of cybercriminals. 'We have data showing that in 2025 the GRU has tripled the number of attacks against Poland, and increased its staffing threefold,' Gawkowski said. 'In future, these could be system-wide attacks aimed at shutting off water or electricity across the entire country.' In response, Poland has established Europe's first joint civilian-military cybersecurity operations centre, which is claimed to have a 99 per cent success rate in neutralising attacks and has a direct line to Donald Tusk, the prime minister. • Inside the Russian cyberagency targeting the West Gawkowski said Polish military counterintelligence had recently helped the UK and the US to detect a Russian hacker unit associated with the GRU that had developed sophisticated malware for siphoning off login details for Microsoft accounts. Yet Poland, usually America's most studiously loyal ally in Europe, has also clashed with Washington on Gawkowski's watch because of his determination to impose a digital services tax on Silicon Valley heavyweights such as Amazon, Google and Meta. Thomas Rose, the incoming US ambassador to Warsaw, warned that the 'self-destructive' measure would 'hurt' Poland and that President Trump would retaliate. However, Gawkowski said his government would stick to its guns and press ahead with the tax even though Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, had retreated on plans for an EU-wide version. 'I believe a Polish patriot needs to fight for equality before the law, and tax equality in Poland,' said Gawkowski, the most senior leftwinger in Tusk's coalition government. 'I will not agree to some golden Big Techs with distinct tax frameworks paying much less than Polish companies for doing the same thing.' He added: 'I think [Von der Leyen] made a huge mistake in backing down on the digital tax. I believe she was pacified by the White House, and history will not forget that.' Gawkowski also threatened to shut down the social media platform X in Poland after Grok, its artificial intelligence chatbot, flooded the website with expletive-laden posts about Tusk last month. The digital minister said free speech was sacrosanct but had to remain within the bounds prescribed by laws against hate speech and death threats. 'It is in the state's interest to shut down such platforms [that violate these laws],' he said. 'I have petitioned the European Commission to impose fines for what has happened. We cannot simply brush this aside; there must be consequences. And those consequences should be counted in millions of euros.' • Edward Lucas: Digital IDs would save us all time and money Gawkowski's office reflects his practical focus; austere in decor, bar a few flags and a red football shirt on the wall. Above a large number 99, it reads 'mObywatel', or 'mCitizen', representing Poland's digital ID programme. The mobile app recently reached 10 million users, roughly one third of the adult population. It has grown into a one-stop digital wallet for official life, holding everything from ID cards and driving licences to student passes and vehicle records. Users can show e-prescriptions via QR code, check penalty points, buy train tickets, pay local taxes and receive flood or air-quality alerts. Ukrainians in Poland can use it as proof of identity — part of Warsaw's push to put bureaucracy in the pocket. 'We'll be happy to teach the British how to use 'mBrit' so they're as satisfied as Poles are with mObywatel,' said Gawkowski, only half-jokingly referring to a planned introduction of a digital ID scheme in the UK.
LBCI
3 days ago
- Politics
- LBCI
Poland charges group with sabotage on behalf of foreign intelligence
Polish prosecutors have charged a group of six people with offences including sabotage commissioned by foreign intelligence services, a spokesperson said on Wednesday. Poland says its role as a hub for aid to Ukraine has made it a target for Russian and Belarusian secret services, accusing Moscow and Minsk of commissioning acts of sabotage such as arson on Polish soil. The prosecutors' office said the trigger for the investigation came from information uncovered during a probe into the activities of Ukrainian citizen Serhii S, who was jailed earlier this year for planning sabotage on behalf of Russia. "The evidence obtained in this case indicated a suspicion that an organised criminal group operating in Poland engaged in recruitment and organisation of sabotage activities for foreign intelligence agencies," the spokesperson said in a statement. "The actions of foreign intelligence agencies were aimed at generating public unrest and creating a sense of helplessness among state authorities through sabotage and subversion." Reuters
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Poland charges group with sabotage on behalf of foreign intelligence
WARSAW (Reuters) -Polish prosecutors have charged a group of six people with offences including sabotage commissioned by foreign intelligence services, a spokesperson said on Wednesday. Poland says its role as a hub for aid to Ukraine has made it a target for Russian and Belarusian secret services, accusing Moscow and Minsk of commissioning acts of sabotage such as arson on Polish soil. Russia and Belarus have rejected such allegations. The prosecutors' office said the trigger for the investigation came from information uncovered during a probe into the activities of Ukrainian citizen Serhii S, who was jailed earlier this year for planning sabotage on behalf of Russia. "The evidence obtained in this case indicated a suspicion that an organised criminal group operating in Poland engaged in recruitment and organisation of sabotage activities for foreign intelligence agencies," the spokesperson said in a statement. "The actions of foreign intelligence agencies were aimed at generating public unrest and creating a sense of helplessness among state authorities through sabotage and subversion." Prosecutors said that there were three Polish defendents (Kamil K, Dawid P and Lukasz K) and three Belarusians (Stepan K, Andrei B, Yaraslau S). Polish privacy laws prevent media from publishing the surnames of people charged with crimes. The indictment relates, among other things, to an arson attack allegedly commissioned by a foreign intelligence agency on a pallet storage facility in Marki, central Poland, in April 2024, prosecutors said. It also relates to attempted arson at a warehouse in Gdansk in March 2024, which was allegedly commissioned by foreign intelligence, and arson attacks on a restaurant in Gdynia in 2023. Four of the defendants were charged with acts of sabotage commissioned by foreign intelligence. The group also faced other charges related to arms trafficking, drug trafficking, and other criminal offences. Stepan K and Dawid P pleaded not guilty, the statement said. Andrei B, Yaraslau S and Lukasz K partially pleaded guily, while Kamil K admitted to all the charges against him.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System
Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least in part responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records that might contain information that could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach. It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the matter described as a yearslong effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches included midlevel criminal cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions, with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames. The disclosure comes as President Trump is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in Alaska on Friday, where Mr. Trump is planning to discuss his push to end the war in Ukraine. Administrators with the court system recently informed Justice Department officials, clerks and chief judges in federal courts that 'persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records,' according to an internal department memo and reviewed by The New York Times. The administrators also advised those officials to quickly remove the most sensitive documents from the system. 'This remains an URGENT MATTER that requires immediate action,' officials wrote, referring to guidance that the Justice Department had issued in early 2021 after the system was first infiltrated. Documents related to criminal activity with an overseas tie, across at least eight district courts, were initially believed to have been targeted. Last month, the chief judges of district courts across the country were quietly warned to move those kinds of cases off the regular document-management system, according to officials briefed on the request. They were initially told not to discuss the matter with other judges in their districts. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
02-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Man Putin Couldn't Kill
Supported by Interpol had been looking for a disgraced finance executive for weeks when Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist, found him, hiding in Belarus. Grozev had become expert at following all but invisible digital trails — black-market cellphone data, passenger manifests, immigration records — in order to unmask Russian spies. These were the sleeper cells living in Western countries and passing as natives, or the people dispatched to hunt down dissidents around the world. He identified the secret police agents behind one of the most high-profile assassination plots of all: the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. That revelation put Grozev in President Vladimir Putin's cross hairs. He wanted Grozev killed, and to make it happen the Kremlin turned to none other than the fugitive financier, who, it turns out, had been recruited by Russian intelligence. Now the man that Grozev had been tracking began tracking him. The fugitive enlisted a team to begin the surveillance. The members of that team are behind bars now. The financier lives in Moscow, where several times a week he makes visits to the headquarters of the Russian secret police. Grozev — still very much alive — imagines the man trying to explain to his supervisors why he failed in his mission. This gives Grozev a small measure of satisfaction. On May 12, after a lengthy trial, Justice Nicholas Hilliard of the Central Criminal Court in London sentenced six people, all of them Bulgarian nationals, to prison terms between five and almost 11 years for their involvement in the plot to kill Grozev, among other operations. The group had spent more than two years working out of England, where the ringleader maintained rooms full of false identity documents and what the prosecution called law-enforcement-grade surveillance equipment. In addition to spying on Grozev and his writing partner, the Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, the Bulgarians spied on a U.S. military base in Germany where Ukrainian soldiers were being trained; they trailed a former Russian law enforcement officer who had fled to Europe; and most embarrassingly for Moscow, they planned a false flag operation against Kazakhstan, a Russian ally. In the past two decades England has been the site of at least two high-profile deadly operations and more than a dozen other suspicious deaths that have been linked to Russia. Yet the trial of this six-person cell appears to be the first time in recent history that authorities have successfully investigated and prosecuted Russian agents operating on British soil. The trial and its outcome, then, are victories. They are small ones, however, relative to the scope of the threat. The Bulgarians seem to be only one part of a multiyear, multicountry operation to kill Grozev. That in turn is only a small part of what appears to be an ever-broadening campaign by the Kremlin, including kidnappings, poisonings, arson and terrorist attacks, to silence its opponents and sow fear abroad. The story of the resources that were marshaled to silence a single inconvenient voice is a terrifying reminder of what Putin, and beyond him the rising generation of autocratic rulers, are capable of. The story of how that single voice refused to be silenced — in fact redoubled his determination to tell the truth, regardless of the very real consequences — serves as a reminder that it's possible to continue to speak and act in the face of mortal danger. But the damage that was done to Grozev's own life and the lives of the people around him is a warning of how vulnerable we are in the face of unchecked, murderous power. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
