Polish lawmakers to hold closed-door session on cyberattacks

WARSAW, Poland — A closed-door session with lawmakers that Poland’s prime minister requested to discuss a number of cyberattacks on Polish government officials will take place Wednesday, the speaker of the country’s parliament said.

The hacks include one last week on the private email and social media accounts of Michal Dworczyk, the head of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s office, and Dworczyk’s wife.

Morawiecki has called such cyberattacks the “new face of contemporary warfare” and said there were signs they were launched from beyond Poland’s eastern border.

Prosecutors are investigating.

Parliament speaker Elzbieta Witek said Tuesday lawmakers will attend the closed session in person as opposed to recent sessions that took place partly remotely.

Government spokesman Piotr Mueller, said the session was necessary for the government to present a report on the “scale of these very broad attacks that are affecting Poland.”

Mueller suggested the attacks concerned other officials besides Dworczyk.

The prime minister has stressed that Poland’s politicians should draw a lesson from the attacks and be very attentive to how they use various communication channels and what level of security they have.

Polish security officials often highlight disinformation and hacking that is aimed at weakening Poland’s position internationally or straining its ties with Western partners. That is widely seen in Poland as a strategic aim of the Kremlin as Warsaw backs sanctions against Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its support for the authoritarian president of Belarus.

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