The turn of February and March brings a series of warnings for customers of financial institutions in Poland. The largest banks, including PKO BP and Pekao S.A., are informing about planned technical outages and massive phishing campaigns. Cybercriminals are exploiting popular topics, such as e-PIT tax settlements, KSeF invoices, or fake traffic fines, to steal data and drain the accounts of unsuspecting users, employing increasingly sophisticated manipulation methods.

Phishing Warnings

Massive attacks using themes of fines, road tolls, and KSeF invoices aim to steal funds from accounts.

Technical Outages in Banks

PKO BP, Pekao, and ING have announced weekend shutdowns of systems, ATMs, and card payments.

Threat with e-PIT

Fraud campaigns target individuals filing taxes online, impersonating the finance ministry.

The current situation in the Polish banking and cybersecurity sector requires citizens to be particularly vigilant. The largest financial entities, such as PKO BP, Pekao S.A., and ING Bank Śląski, have announced temporary restrictions on service access. This coming weekend, customers must expect the inability to withdraw cash from ATMs, make card payments, and use electronic banking. Technical outages, although routine, have become an opportunity for fraudsters who are sending misleading messages, impersonating official bank notifications. Simultaneously, law enforcement and security experts are warning about a plague of fake SMS and email messages. Criminals are using the phishing mechanism, sending demands to settle alleged road tolls, overdue fines, or invoices in the KSeF system. Often, a single character in the URL determines the authenticity of links, making these traps difficult to detect at first glance. A particular target has become individuals using the e-Tax Office portal during the annual tax filing period. For years, the tax filing season in Poland has been a period of increased activity for cybercriminals, who prey on the stress and haste of taxpayers.Financial institutions appeal to users to never click on suspicious attachments or provide login credentials on pages linked from external messages. Experts remind that banks never ask for passwords or full payment card details in text messages. If you receive a suspicious message regarding Revolut or other mobile services, you should immediately ignore it and report the incident to the appropriate support department. „Caution customers! Do not click this attachment.” — Pekao S.A. Security Alert3 — major banks announced technical outages