Russian hackers working for the GRU tried to cause a blackout in Poland
Cyber experts believe that the hacker group Sandworm, a unit of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, is behind the December attack on Poland’s energy grid.
Cyber experts believe that the hacker group Sandworm, a unit of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, is behind the December attack on Poland’s energy grid.
Cyber experts believe that the hacker group Sandworm, a unit of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, is behind the December attack on Poland’s energy grid.
Earlier, Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka said that during the attempted cyberattack on December 29 and 30, hackers attacked two thermal power plants and also tried to disrupt communication between renewable energy facilities, such as wind turbines and electricity distribution operators. This was reported by TechCrunch.
Motka called the incident «the most powerful attack» on Poland’s energy infrastructure in recent years, and the Polish government blamed Russia for the attempt. Polish media reported that the attacks could have cut off heating and electricity to at least half a million homes across the country.
Cybersecurity experts at ESET said they had received a copy of a malware called DynoWiper, which is designed to permanently destroy data on computers in order to disrupt their operation.
ESET has linked the malware with «medium confidence» to the Sandworm hacking group, a division of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Experts found «significant overlap» with previous research into Sandworm malware, including that used to attack Ukraine’s energy sector.
Sandworm has been operating since at least 2009 and is part of military unit 74455 of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the Russian military intelligence agency that mainly specializes in carrying out attacks on Ukraine.
They have hacked Ukrainian power grids several times before. In 2022, they combined their cyberattack with missile strikes by the Russian occupiers.
After the attempted hack, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that the country’s cybersecurity systems worked and «critical infrastructure was not at risk.»



