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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has announced that there is an ongoing cyberattack by Russian hackers against his Civic Platform (PO) party and two of its coalition partners, The Left (Lewica) and the Polish People’s Party (PSL). The incident has happened just ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.
“Two days before the elections, a group of Russian hackers operating on Telegram attacked the websites of Civic Platform,” wrote Tusk on social media on Friday afternoon. “The Left and PSL websites are also targeted.”
“The [Polish security] services are conducting intensive activities in this case,” he added. “The attack is ongoing.”
Na dwa dni przed wyborami grupa rosyjskich hakerów działających na Telegramie zaatakowała strony internetowe Platformy Obywatelskiej. Celem są także strony Lewicy i PSL. Służby prowadzą w tej sprawie intensywne działania. Atak trwa.
— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) May 16, 2025
At the time of writing, PO and PSL’s websites are inaccessible, with error messages appearing instead. Websites linked to The Left are currently working, though were also down earlier on Friday.
A few hours before Tusk’s announcement, his chief of staff, Jan Grabiec, had reported that a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) had been underway against PO’s website since 9 a.m. DDoS attacks seek to flood their target with traffic in order to overload the system and render it inoperable.
Grabiec said that the attack had also targetted a page where there is a form allowing people to make donations to the campaign of PO’s presidential candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski.
“Blocking the main page of the party that supports Rafał Trzaskowski on the last day of the election campaign is of course a hindrance, because it contains current information and the possibility of collecting payments is temporarily blocked,” said Grabiec, quoted by broadcaster RMF.
Jacek Dziura, a spokesman for NASK, a state agency tasked with monitoring cyberthreats, told Polsat News that they “can confirm that the pro-Russian group ‘noname057’ is responsible for today’s DDoS attacks on some Polish websites”.
“In the case of all DDoS attacks such as this one, we remind you that the attackers are seeking to gain publicity and sow unrest and chaos,” he added. “We ask for consideration in terms of communicating this.”
Last month, Tusk also announced that PO’s IT systems had suffered a major cyberattack that had an “eastern footprint”, an apparent accusation towards Russia or Belarus. He said the incident was an attempt at “foreign interference” in the upcoming presidential election.
However, earlier this week, Rzeczpospolita, a leading newspaper, reported that, six weeks on from that incident, no investigation into it has yet been initiated by Polish prosecutors.
A cyberattack on Poland's main ruling PO party was an attempt at "foreign interference" in the upcoming presidential elections, says @donaldtusk.
He also claims the attack had an "eastern footprint" – an apparent accusation towards Belarus or Russia https://t.co/VujQWHDAIa
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 3, 2025
Last week, Poland’s digital affairs minister, Krzysztof Gawkowski, warned that there was “an unprecedented attempt by Russia to interfere in the Polish elections”. He said that there had been cyberattacks against the IT systems of all candidates competing in Sunday’s election.
Recent days have also seen a controversy over alleged foreign interference in Poland’s election campaign after NASK announced on Wednesday that it had identified a large number of political adverts on Facebook that were likely to have been funded from abroad – something that would violate Polish law.
The adverts expressed support for Trzaskowski or criticism of his two main right-wing rivals, Karol Nawrocki and Sławomir Mentzen. However, there is no evidence that Trzaskowski, his campaign or PO was involved in them.
Opposition parties have, however, criticised NASK for failing to respond to the issue earlier and have accused of it providing misleading and sometimes false information in its communication about the incident.
A prominent NGO engaged in promoting democracy played a role in creating material that was used in allegedly foreign-funded Facebook adverts supporting Rafał Trzaskowski, the presidential candidate of Poland's main ruling party, and criticising his rivals.https://t.co/stsELwFjQJ
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 15, 2025
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Kancelaria Sejmu/Flickr (under CC BY-NC 2.0)
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.
