Poland says hackers breached water treatment plants, and the US is facing the same threat

Source: TechCrunch

Poland detects attacks on water treatment plants

Poland’s intelligence service said it detected attacks on five water‑treatment plants where hackers could have taken control of the industrial equipment inside, potentially tampering with the safety of the water supply.

Similar threats to U.S. water infrastructure

In 2021, a hacker briefly gained access to a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida and attempted to increase the level of sodium hydroxide—a caustic chemical—to dangerous levels. Since then, the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have warned that water utilities remain a soft target for foreign hackers.

Polish intelligence report

On Friday, Poland’s Internal Security Agency (the country’s top intelligence agency) published a report covering the last two years of its operations and the threats the country faced. The report states that Polish intelligence thwarted multiple acts of sabotage from Russian government spies and hackers targeting:

• Military facilities
• Critical infrastructure (power grids, water supplies, transportation networks)
• Civilian targets

These attacks may have resulted in fatalities.

“The most serious challenge remains the sabotage activity against Poland, inspired and organized by Russian intelligence services. This threat was (and is) real and immediate. It requires full mobilization,” the report reads.

The report did not specify whether the hackers behind the water‑treatment facility attacks were Russian government spies. However, Poland has recently faced several Russian‑government hacking attempts, including a failed attempt to bring down the country’s energy grid. That breach was later attributed to poor security controls at the targeted facilities.

Global pattern of attacks on water and energy infrastructure

A joint advisory from CISA, the FBI, the NSA, and other federal agencies warned that Iranian‑backed hackers are actively targeting programmable logic controllers—the industrial computers that run water and energy facilities—at U.S. utilities. The same Iranian group, CyberAv3ngers, previously broke into digital control panels at multiple U.S. water‑treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2023, attacks linked by federal agencies to escalating hostilities in the Middle East.

Strategic implications

The attacks against Poland are not unique; they follow a strategy employed by the Russian government both in war zones such as Ukraine and against Western countries it views as longstanding adversaries. According to Polish intelligence, the goal is to destabilize and weaken the West, with cyberattacks and cyber‑espionage serving as tools in a broader toolkit for the Kremlin.