- Polsa announces that it has suffered a data violation
- The agency says that it closed its computer systems after alert
- The initiates claim that the incident should be compromised by e-mail
The Polish space agency (POLSA) confirmed that it had recently undergone a cyber attack which forced it to withdraw the offline infrastructure.
The agency confirmed the attack via an X Post, in which it declared that the competent authorities had already been informed.
“There has been a Polsa cybersecurity incident,” reads the Post X-Translated. “The relevant services and institutions have been informed. The situation is analyzed. In order to secure data after hacking, the Polsa network was immediately disconnected from the Internet. We will keep you posted.
Russia is accused
Such a short announcement has left a lot of room for speculation, and surely, some media began to discuss if it was a ransomware attack. After all, it is a standard practice in ransomware attacks to disconnect the affected infrastructure of the Internet, to avoid data leaks and quickly break the connections to any persistence mechanism.
However, an anonymous source told The register That the E-mails of Polsa have been compromised and that the staff were invited to use phones for communication, instead of emails.
The news was later confirmed by the Polish minister of digitization, Krzysztof Gawkowski, who said that the Polish government was engaged in “intensive operational activities” to understand who are the attackers. Gawkowski added that Polsa received a helping hand from the country’s two computer security incidents, CSIRT NASK and CSIRT MON.
The identity of the threat actors, or the goal of the attack, is not known for the moment. PK Press Club reports that Warsaw has “repeatedly” accused Moscow of having tried to destabilize Poland due to the military support it provides to Ukraine, with whom Russia is at war at the moment.
Russia has denied all allegations, PK Press Club Added.
Polsa supported Poland’s involvement in the European Space Agency (ESA) projects, including participation in the Exomars mission and the development of satellite technologies. Polsa has also played a role in the launch of the first scientific satellites in Poland, such as PW-SAT and BRITE-PL, which focused on the attenuation of space debris and stellar research.
Via The register