Cyberattack on Poland's ePUAP e-government system detected and stopped, ABW involved

The attack and the response

Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland's deputy prime minister and minister of digital affairs, reported on late Tuesday, 10 November, that a cyberattack on the state ePUAP system had been detected and stopped. He said the teams responsible for security had acted immediately to keep the system stable. Technical work to bring the platform back to full functionality was still in progress when he spoke.

In a post on social media, he wrote:

“Currently, technical work is under way to restore full functionality.”

What ePUAP does

The electronic Platform of Public Administration Services (ePUAP) is a nationwide online platform that lets citizens and businesses communicate electronically with public bodies. It also allows public bodies to communicate with each other. Public institutions can offer their services electronically without building their own IT systems, and users can handle matters with many institutions through a single account. Access is not limited by geography, and any user with internet access who can confirm their identity electronically may use it. The statements did not specify which services were affected by the outage.

Security services and the infrastructure

Gawkowski said the infrastructure of the Central Computing Centre (Centralny Osrodek Informatyki) is secure. In line with procedures, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) was brought in to fully establish the circumstances of the incident. He said authorities would keep the public informed about the findings as the proceedings continue.

“We will keep informing on an ongoing basis about all findings from the proceedings.”

What remains unclear

The statements gave no date for when full functionality would return. They did not describe the nature of the attack, who was behind it, or how many users were affected. The only official details so far come from the minister's own announcements, which were made on social media and in comments reported the same evening.