Researchers say Russian government hackers were behind attempted Poland power outage

A recent failed cyberattack on Poland’s energy grid in late December has been attributed to Russian government hackers by the cybersecurity firm ESET. The attack targeted two heat and power plants and aimed to disrupt communication between renewable energy installations and power distribution operators. Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka described the incident as the “strongest attack” on the country’s energy infrastructure in years. ESET identified the use of destructive “wiper” malware called DynoWiper, which irreversibly destroys data to disable systems, and linked it with medium confidence to the Russian hacking group known as Sandworm. This attack on Poland’s energy sector closely mirrors previous cyberattacks by Sandworm, notably the 2015 and 2016 strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that caused widespread power outages. Despite the severity of the attempt, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that the country’s cybersecurity defenses successfully prevented any critical infrastructure from being compromised. The incident highlights ongoing cyber threats from Russian state-backed actors