Polish towns hosting US troops had websites hacked: report
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
15.03.2017 16:05
Several Polish municipalities which hosted US troops as part of a NATO operation experienced cyber attacks on their websites, Poland’s deputy defence minister has told the Reuters news agency.
Photo: Pexels.com
Tomasz Szatkowski said that the attacks in January highlighted a need for the country to increase its budget to combat cyber terrorism.
Szatkowski said that Poland will spend around PLN 1 bln annually on cyber security, increasing the budgets of previous years several times over, according to Reuters.
“We are constantly seeing large destructive cyber and information activity by certain countries,” Szatkowski was quoted as saying. “The process has been intensifying.”
Szatkowski declined to specify who was behind the attacks, but added that they “included pro-Russian content”.
“It is clear to us who the author is and who inspires such activities,” Szatkowski said, adding that the attacks were aimed at painting a negative picture of Poland's allies and “presenting the Russian version of the conflict in eastern Ukraine”.
Poland is one of a few NATO member countries which spend the designated two percent of GDP on defence.
Amid fears of Russian aggression following Moscow's annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, NATO decided at a Warsaw summit in 2016 to deploy four rotating multinational battalions of some 1,000 soldiers each to the military alliance’s eastern borders.
(rg/pk)