The Polish security agency has published a report confirming what in Europe has long been treated as a „silent war": hackers broke into five water-treatment plants in Poland and could potentially manipulate chemicals in the water supply network. In the worst-case scenario - with risk to human lives.

The Internal Security Agency report covers a two-year period and claims Poland thwarted multiple sabotage attempts - on military facilities, energy grids, transport systems. „The most serious challenge remains sabotage activity against Poland, inspired and organised by Russian intelligence services," the document states. No hedging. No „allegedly."

The scenario isn't new. In 2021 in Oldsmar, Florida, a hacker briefly managed to enter the control system of a plant and tried to raise the sodium hydroxide level - a caustic chemical - to dangerous concentrations. The FBI and the US CISA have repeated the same since: water utilities are „soft targets."

Last month, a joint warning from CISA, FBI, NSA and other US agencies revealed that Iranian hackers from the CyberAv3ngers group are actively attacking programmable logic controllers - the industrial computers that run water and energy plants. The same group in 2023 broke into several water systems in Pennsylvania.

For the Balkans, this isn't a distant story. Poland and our region share the same dependence on old industrial infrastructure and the same type of attackers. Whereas - here there's no Polish-CERT level apparatus, no publicly available list of „confirmed" breaches, no report like the one Warsaw publishes at the end of the year. Is anyone here even tracking who's trying to get into the water systems?

The plan, as Polish intelligence describes it, is simple: destabilisation and weakening of the West. Cyberattacks and cyber-espionage are just tools in a wider box. And while missiles are more spectacular, one water sabotage can produce a bigger panic than half a drone squadron.