Poland says Russian cyberspies targeted government networks

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WARSAW (Reuters) -Russian cyberspies targeted networks belonging to the Polish government this week, the state-run National Research Institute (NASK) said on Wednesday.

NASK said the group, known as APT28, was part of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency and used malicious software to target Polish government institutions.

Last week Germany and its allies said APT28 had conducted a sweeping cyberespioange campaign against German defence and aerospace firms, as well as Germany’s Social Democrats party.

“Malware targeting Polish government institutions was distributed this week by the APT28 group, associated with Russia’s intelligence services,” NASK said in a statement.

“Technical indicators and similarities to past attacks allowed the identification of the APT28 group … This group is associated with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU).”

NASK recommended that network administrators verify whether employees were under attack.

In an interview with Ukrainian news service Economic Truth cited by Polish state news agency PAP, Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Warsaw was constantly identifying cyberattacks from Russia on targets including the water supply and the health service.

The Russian embassy in Warsaw did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment, and there was no immediate comment by Moscow.

In response to allegations by Germany that Russia had launched cyberattacks on its defence and aerospace firms and ruling party, Moscow accused Berlin earlier on Wednesday of using baseless myths about Russian hackers to escalate tensions.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz in Warsaw, James Pearson in London; editing by Timothy Heritage)