Polish government site podatki.gov.pl, at which citizens can submit their annual personal income tax information, was not functioning on Tuesday. "The overload was a result of intentional DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service - edit.) actions aimed at generating significant additional traffic at the site," the Finance Ministry's press office told TVN24 on Wednesday.
A press officer of the National Revenue Administration informed TVN24 Biznes that there had been some problems with the website in the morning. He argued that "it happens because 20 million people are filing PITs" and added that "it was not a hacker attack".
The Finance Ministry press office said on Wednesday that Tuesday's "temporary difficulties" with access to podatki.gov.pl had been caused by "an overload of the site". "After a detailed analysis, we can confirm that said overload was a result of intentional DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service - edit.) actions aimed at generating significant additional traffic at the site," the ministry explained.
The ministry assured that no data leak had taken place and that it was safe to use all services available at the website.
Private broadcaster rmf24.pl said on Tuesday that the podatki.gov.pl website had been blocked by cybercriminals. Furthermore, the portal said that cybercriminals had been plotting an attack on Polish websites on Russian websites and communicators.
Western officials say the Russian government is a global leader in hacking and uses cyber-espionage against foreign governments. Moscow has consistently denied that it carries out hacking operations.
The Russian embassy in Warsaw said in an emailed response reqeuesting comment that it is "already used to the fact that in the West you can now accuse Russia of anything without evidence. This is another such case in the well-known style of saying it is 'highly likely'".
"Russians are responsible for yesterday's attack, it must be made clear. We have information that makes it very likely that this was the adversary," Janusz Cieszyński, an official responsible for digitalisation, told broadcaster Polsat News.
Cieszyński said the attack had consisted of distributed denial of service but that there had been no leaking of taxpayers' data.
"This is an attack that blocks access to the site, but does not block security and put our data at risk," he said.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters, PAP