Millions of Poles received an emergency text from the Government Security Centre (RCB) on Friday, 31 July, but the linked government website quickly became unavailable. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack.
The alert, sent a day after a Russian missile was detected in Polish airspace, contained the phrase „badz przygotowany” (original spelling) and directed recipients to the „Safety Guide” on gov.pl. As of around 10:50 a.m., the page was still not loading.
According to Gawkowski, the problems stemmed from an enormous surge in traffic on government websites. He stressed that the guide itself was operational and that the high number of users simply slowed page loading. He also ruled out a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack.
Missile incident and warning gaps
The background to Friday’s mass alert was an incident early Thursday, when an unidentified object entered Polish airspace at 3:40 a.m. An F-16 fighter was scrambled to intercept it, but the object disappeared at 3:46 a.m. Its crash site was later located near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia.
The Operational Command of the Armed Forces announced the discovery. Investigators have established that the object was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile carrying a significant amount of explosive material.
Thursday’s events also sparked criticism of the siren and SMS alert system. Residents in nearby areas reportedly received no RCB text message after the crash, leaving them confused. RCB declared it would review and change its procedures.
Phishing concern and mObywatel plans
The Friday alert drew attention from the cybersecurity industry. ZaufanaTrzeciaStrona noted that by sending a link by SMS, RCB was effectively „teaching people to click links in text messages” – something experts routinely warn against because of phishing risks.
Gawkowski responded to the outage at a press conference.
– We have no attack, no failure. The RCB guide works, but we have huge network traffic on government sites, resulting from big interest, and this causes load and may result in longer page loading times – explained Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski.
The minister also announced that a threat-alert module will be added to the mObywatel application. However, he acknowledged this would not solve the challenge of reaching all citizens: the app has about 12 million users, while Friday’s RCB alert reached 30 million people.
– I encourage you right now, because in the mObywatel application you can use the „Safety Guide”. The fact that there is such great interest in reading it is very good – assessed Krzysztof Gawkowski.
Źródło: WNP.PL, Fot. Paweł Supernak / PAP
