Poland’s ministry of digital affairs has launched a new service allowing people to check if they have been affected by a large data breach that emerged on Monday. Many users complained that the service was initially not working for several hours, but it is now functional.
On Monday night, IT security news service Zaufana Trzecia Strona reported that “millions of logins and passwords related to Polish online services and accounts of Poles around the world” had been posted to Cebulka, a Polish-language forum accessible via Tor software that facilitates anonymous online communication.
To chyba najpoważniejszy wyciek danych polskich internautów w ostatnich latach. Do sieci trafiły miliony loginów i haseł.https://t.co/Y79nRjtC0N
Posprzątanie tego incydentu zajmie sporo czasu i pracy. pic.twitter.com/Ijh5Na3842
— ZaufanaTrzeciaStrona @zaufanatrzeciastrona@infosec (@Zaufana3Strona) May 29, 2023
According to Zaufana Trzecia Strona, Monday’s data breach is probably “one of the largest single leaks in the history of the Polish Internet,” with over six million logins and passwords having been published and over 100,000 individuals being affected.
The majority of data that appeared in the leak are accounts from sites like Facebook, the Polish postal service, and various Polish banking and e-commerce platforms. Details for accounts registered to the Polish government domain gov.pl were also posted to the forum.
On Wednesday morning, Janusz Cieszyński, the digital affairs minister acknowledged that “a large collection of usernames and passwords of Polish citizens appeared online”.
In response to the data breach, Cieszyński announced that his ministry had launched a service – available at bezpiecznedane.gov.pl – allowing internet users to check if their information has been included in the leak.
Przedwczoraj w nocy w sieci pojawił się duży zbiór loginów i haseł 🇵🇱 obywateli.
Uruchomiliśmy proste narzędzie do sprawdzenia, czy Wasze dane znalazły się w tym wycieku. Zapraszam do korzystania z https://t.co/5kylczcTH7
— Janusz Cieszyński (@jciesz) May 31, 2023
However, many internet users quickly pointed out that they could not access the service, leaving them unable to check whether they had been affected.
The digital affairs ministry acknowledged that there were issues with the website in the first few hours following its launch and revealed that work was being carried out to resolve these problems. The website eventually became operational at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday.
Cieszyński revealed that the service had been made in less than 24 hours by the Central IT Office (COI), which implements IT projects for the public sector. The minister explained that the initial problems with the service were due to unprecedented traffic shortly after its launch, during which patches were still being uploaded.
Poland's government says Russian hackers were behind a coordinated attack this morning on the websites of a number of leading media outlets, resulting in some being inaccessible to users https://t.co/EPYxsrv92n
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 18, 2023
Main image credit: Ministerstwo Cyfryzacji
Anna Hackett is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a recent graduate of European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and has had previous journalistic experience with the Irish Independent News & Media group.
