Poland has busted a cyber-espionage network tied to Belarusian and Russian intelligence that attacked the state news agency PAP and planned further actions, Digitalisation Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said on September 9.

Poland, which has become the West’s strategic outpost virtually overnight since Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022, is a primary target for Russian-linked espionage, cyberattacks and physical attempts at causing internal instability.

"We managed to dismantle a group of saboteurs who had specific objectives within Poland and were operating from a known location," Gawkowski said.

The group planned a complex cyber-espionage operation, which began with an attack on PAP that took place in late May.

On May 31, PAP published a false news story claiming that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk ordered the mobilisation of 200,000 people to fight in Ukraine. The story was withdrawn minutes later only to appear again after 20 minutes, after which it was killed again.

Poland said in response to the attack that it will earmark over PLN3bn (€700 million) to bolster cybersecurity, as the number of cyber attacks is very much on the rise, according to Gawkowski.

“Over 400,000 cyber attack-related incidents have been reported” in the first half of 2024 alone, doubling the number recorded in the entire 2023, the minister said.

The busted group’s larger aim was to infiltrate additional government entities and state-controlled firms, particularly those tied to national security, Gawkowski also said.

Poland plans to update its electronic communication regulations, Special Services Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told the same press conference.

"We would also like the Polish authorities to know everything about, and have control over, the whole telecommunication transit through Poland," Siemoniak said, according to PAP.

The Polish government has recently approved a draft law aimed at fighting terrorist content on-line. The law would give the country's counterintelligence agency ABW the "right to remove such content from the internet in agreement with the deputy prosecutor general", Siemoniak said.