POLAND: New cyber attacks & more – 20th Jun 2024

Witam from BA! This is the Rorshok Poland Update from the 20th of June twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Poland.

Let’s start off with national security. Recall that last week, some hackers gained access to the national news agency systems or PAP and published two fake news. On Sunday, the 16th, hackers targeted TVP, the national television channel, and they interrupted the broadcasting of Poland’s first football match in the EURO twenty twenty-four tournament.

Authorities said Hackers carried out a DDOS attack, meaning that they blocked access to the service by flooding it with a large number of false bot user requests. The director of TVP Sport apologized to fans for missing the start of the match. In the meantime, the authorities started an investigation to find the perpetrators.

On a similar note, On Monday, the 17th, Dziennik Prawna, the Polish legal and business daily newspaper, reported that hackers leaked the personal data of ten million patients from medical apps that doctors and pharmacies use. However, there has been no official confirmation of the leak.

The journal claims hackers got the people’s names, addresses, and contact details that they could sell on illegal forums. It seems like the software developers were responsible for the leak, since the security system in the app was weak and the hackers benefited from it.

In another cyberattack on Thursday, the 20th, authorities have warned about the existence of fake versions of credible Polish media outlets. Russian hackers used a technique called Doppelganger and created a fake version of Polskie Radio’s website, a Polish online news source. Hackers cloned the website and created an identical one with a very similar web address, for example, polskieradio.icu instead of polskieradio.pl.

Polskie Radio came out to say that hackers published fake news on the cloned website, including ones claiming Ukraine will never enter the EU and that Europe wants Poland to leave the union. The hackers aim to spread misinformation about the real situation between Poland, the EU, and Ukraine.

So far, few people have clicked on the fake website.

Moving on to a health update, pharmacies started selling morning-after pills without a doctor’s prescription as part of the current government’s pilot program. The previous ruling Law and Justice party didn’t support the initiative due to their conservative views, and people required a doctor's prescription to buy the pills. However, the ruling Civic Platform current progressive government backed this program, and according to the latest Ministry of health data, 1,050 pharmacies out of over 12,000 operating in the country started to sell the pill.

The pharmacies that sell the pill without prescription put a sticker on their front doors. Want to know where these pharmacies are located? The Ministry of Health posted an online map, check it out with the link in the show notes!

On Monday, the 17th, a new regulation came into effect that requires drivers of transportation apps like Uber to have a Polish driving license. Before, anyone who had a foreign driving license could be an Uber driver. This change will affect thousands of foreigners, since there are currently more non-Polish Uber drivers than Polish ones.

Additionally, the regulation now requires taxi app owners to meet the new employee personally for the job interview and store the driver’s personal information for five years, instead of doing it via the app. One of the reasons for this new in depth check of personal information is the high number of sexual harassment that takes place in taxis in Poland.

Moving on to politics. On Friday, the 14th, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s party, the Civic Platform, accused the Law and Justice party, the main opposition, of printing banners without the required financial documentation in the twenty twenty-three parliamentary elections. Roman Giertych, a Civic Platform MP, said that they will ask the National Electoral Commission to cut the Law and Justice Party from political subsidies. AS a response, Jarosław Kaczyński, the president of the Law and Justice Party, said that the ruling coalition is trying to eliminate political competition and democracy by cutting subsidies.

Politicians continue to create different commissions on Russian influence. Recall that in twenty twenty-three, the Law and Justice Government created the first commission to investigate Russian influence in the parliament. At that time, the Civic Platform and other opposition parties criticized this initiative, saying its goal was to remove Tusk from political life. So when the Civic Platform and its allies won the government and became the majority in late twenty twenty-three, they removed the Law and Justice commission and created their own.

On Friday, the 14th, Law and Justice announced that they will create another commission on Russian influence because they think the current one’s aim is to accuse Law and Justice of illegal activities, which will make it the 4th commission created for this aim so far in the political scene.

Peoples reactions online are wondering when politicians will give up creating an unlimited number of commissions for Russian influence, since no commission has made any progress so far.

On Thursday, the 13th, Prosecutor General Adam Bodnar requested to lift the immunity of EU Minister Adam Szłapka, a Civic Platform MP, because he hit and injured a cyclist with his car in twenty twenty-three. According to the request, Szłapka was responsible for the incident, and it was not intentional, so he could only get up to three years in prison.

Recall that last month, an illegal immigrant killed a Polish border guard with a hand-made spear when he was trying to illegally cross the border from Belarus to Poland and then escaped to Belarus. Later on, the Polish foreign minister demanded Belarus to identify the suspect and hand him over to Poland.

However, on Monday, the 17th, Belarus rejected the demand, saying that Poland was breaching border cooperation agreements. Radosław Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said that it is not true and that Poland was only protecting its border. People on social media argued that Belarus' rejection of handing over the suspect proves that the country encourages immigrants to cross into Poland and the EU.

More and more fatal tourist accidents continue to happen in the Tatra Mountains, in the southern part of the country. Last week, a tourist died after slipping on frozen snow and falling from the high point of the mountain. Also, on Friday, the 14th, a seventy-year-old man fell from the highest point of the mountain and died. He had to wait several hours for the rescue operation to start, since authorities could not use helicopters due to the prevailing fog and rainfall. In another incident in the Polish mountains, lightning struck a group of twenty-four tourists in the Izera Mountains in Lower Silesia. Medical teams took twelve people to the hospital, and luckily nobody died.

Authorities said that sometimes tourists go on these hikes without proper equipment, such as crampons, ice axes, and helmets.

To close of this edition, on Saturday, the 15th, thousands of people took the streets to celebrate LGBTQ+’s annual Equality Parade in Warsaw and other cities. This year’s slogan was Time for Equality is Now!. The LGBTQ+ community in Poland has the lowest amount of rights among EU countries, so the participants demanded enhanced legal protection against hate speech and crimes, the right to marriage and civil partnerships for all citizens, and the recognition of trans rights as human rights.

Although the current progressive government wants to satisfy these demands, conservative President Duda prevents any legislation that will enhance LGBTQ+ rights.

Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, the expected candidate for the presidency race in twenty twenty-five from the Civic Platform party, also attended the parade and stated that he will support these demands if he wins the twenty twenty-five election. In twenty twenty he lost the presidential election only by a two percent difference against Andrzej Duda.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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