“Hybrid warfare by neighbouring country” behind hacks of Polish politicians’ social media, suggests MP

After the Twitter account of a senior MP from the ruling party posted intimate photographs of another politician, he has claimed to be the victim of a hack that may be part of “hybrid warfare” launched by a neighbouring country against Poland.

Confusion remains, however, about the provenance of the photographs and how they ended up being posted online, with the two politicians involved in the case each offering two contradictory explanations.

The episode is the latest in a series of apparent hacks of social media accounts belonging to senior figures associated with the Law and Justice (PiS) party, including two government ministers.

Yesterday morning, a series of unusual posts appeared on the Twitter account of Marek Suski, a long-serving 62-year-old MP who is deputy head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus.

Among the tweets was one containing intimate photos of Ewa Szarzyńska, deputy leader of the council in Mogilno, a small town in central Poland. The pictures showed Szarzyńska posing in her underwear, and the posts on Suski’s account accused her of “vulgar behaviour” and “sexual promiscuity”.

The tweets also said that Suski would do everything in his power to ensure that Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS’s powerful chairman, remove Szarzyńska, who was elected with the support of PiS, from politics.

Soon after the messages appeared, PiS’s spokeswoman, Anita Czerwińska, announced that Suski’s account had been hacked, that the posts were not written by him, and that the issue was being investigated. A few hours later, the tweets were deleted.

Subsequently, however, both Suski and Szarzyńska offered apparently inconsistent explanations. Speaking to Rzeczpospolita, Suski said he had only “learned of this lady’s existence” due to the hack. But yesterday the MP told journalists that he “may have met her a few times in my life”, reports TVN24.

Szarzyńska initially told Gazeta Wyborcza that the photos were “private” ones she had taken years ago on her phone and had never shared with anyone. But in a separate interview with TVP Info, she said that she had never taken any such photos. She also claimed her social media accounts had been hacked.

Suski told Rzeczpospolita that “this lady and I have become victims of a heinous crime”, which he has reported to police. He claimed that the hackers also took control of his email inbox, which he uses for professional purposes. Suski is chairman of the parliamentary energy and treasury committee.

“I know that in a neighbouring country there is a special unit to attack Poland…a professional hacker unit,” Suski continued. “Today we have a kind of hybrid war, including on the internet, and maybe this is an element of such actions.”

The episode is the latest in a series of alleged hacks of the social media profiles of senior figures associated with PiS. In December, a vulgar and racist post appeared on the Facebook page of the family and social policy minister, Marlena Maląg. She later announced that her account had been hacked and the case reported to prosecutors.

Earlier this month, a deputy development minister, Iwona Michałek, who is from one of PiS’s coalition partners, also said that her Twitter account had been hijacked after it posted messages critical of PiS, including an image of Kaczyński behind bars.

In November, another PiS MP, Marcin Kamil Duszek, said his Facebook account had been hacked after it posted a photo of him in a car alongside a young woman with the words “meet this beauty…She will be my new secretary…My fellow MPs will be jealous”.

In recent weeks, three other PiS politicians – Joanna Borowiak, Arkadiusz Czartoryski, and Andrzej Melak – have also claimed to have had their social media accounts hijacked.

According to the findings of Konkret24, the attacks began with a link to a text containing false information about a “planned great war between NATO and Russia”. Last month, online security experts told Rzeczpospolita that the hacking cases looked like a “planned, well-organised attack” against the ruling coalition.

Main image credit: Anna Jarecka / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.