The past two years have shown a steady rise in Russia-aligned cyber activity aimed at the eastern flank of NATO, with Poland and the Czech Republic frequently in the crosshairs. Attackers have combined broad, noisy disruption campaigns with targeted espionage to probe political, military, and civilian networks. This hybrid blend of DDoS, supply-chain and software exploitation, and tailored spear-phishing is the pattern defenders on the Eastern flank must treat as the new baseline.

Observed campaigns fall into two broad categories. The first is high-volume, relatively low-sophistication disruption that aims to degrade public services, erode confidence, and create noise for intelligence operations. Pro-Russian hacktivist collectives have used distributed denial of service and other blunt tools against municipal and banking websites in the Czech Republic and region-wide targets in 2023. These actions are disruptive even when they do not penetrate deep into targeted networks, because they force emergency responses and divert analyst time.

The second category is measured, espionage-focused activity attributed to state intelligence services or their proxies. Polish authorities and CERT Polska documented a widespread spear-phishing and malware campaign in spring 2023 with tactics and tooling that mapped closely to clusters tracked as Nobelium / APT29. That operation leveraged carefully crafted lures, HTML smuggling techniques, and novel downloaders to reach diplomatic and government personnel. Parallel reporting and joint technical advisories from Western agencies show other Russian-linked actors continuing to exploit known infrastructure and software vulnerabilities to gain footholds and move laterally.

Tactical takeaways from public advisories are clear. Russian state-aligned groups repeatedly exploit unpatched services, third-party build and CI/CD infrastructure, and human-targeted delivery vectors. For example, SVR-linked actors were observed exploiting CI tooling vulnerabilities at scale in late 2023, and GRU-linked groups such as APT28 have been linked to router and network device misuse to establish persistent reconnaissance infrastructure. These patterns show a preference for gaining and maintaining stealthy access via software supply chains, exposed admin consoles, and spear-phishing rather than relying solely on overt destruction.

Poland’s exposure is amplified by a high operational tempo and a large surface area of government and critical infrastructure services facing frequent probes. Independent security industry telemetry and national-level reporting in early 2024 recorded a markedly elevated volume of attacks against Polish public administration and military targets, making Poland among the most targeted countries in Central Europe. That persistent pressure raises the bar on incident response expectations and the need for continuous resilience measures rather than one-off hardening.

For the Czech Republic, a steady drumbeat of both hacktivist DDoS and targeted espionage has produced a policy response that emphasizes international cooperation and hardened information sharing. Prague’s recent expansion of bilateral and multilateral cyber dialogue reflects recognition that attribution, deterrence, and collective defense are integral to managing these threats. Nevertheless, tactical gaps remain at municipal and sectoral levels, where many services are run by organizations with limited security budgets and expertise.

Where defenses are weakest

1) Unpatched software and exposed management interfaces. Adversaries prefer known, exploitable flaws in network devices, CI/CD tools, and internet-facing services because they enable initial access without custom zero-day work. Public advisories have repeatedly pointed to campaigns that leveraged exactly these vectors.

2) Supply-chain and third-party risk. Targeting of build systems and vendor infrastructure yields access far upstream of primary victims and can be used to distribute compromised artifacts to multiple downstream organizations. The SVR exploitation of TeamCity servers in 2023 illustrates how attackers value this vector.

3) Human-targeted social engineering. Well-crafted spear-phishing and HTML smuggling delivery methods bypass traditional gateway controls and prey on users in diplomatic, policy, and defense roles. CERT Polska’s 2023 findings remain a direct reminder that training plus technical controls are both necessary.

4) Resource and capability asymmetries at local levels. Municipalities, local utilities, and some noncentral government bodies often lack the telemetry, MFA coverage, and patch cadence that national bodies maintain, making them low-effort targets for disruption campaigns. Observed DDoS activity in 2023 exploited exactly this unevenness.

Immediate measures for Eastern flank defenders

  • Prioritize rapid patching and asset inventory. Focus on internet-facing services, VPN and remote-access gateways, CI/CD platforms, and routers. Apply vendor mitigations and monitor for known IOCs tied to Russian-aligned clusters.

  • Harden the software supply chain. Require code-signing, reproducible builds where possible, and vet vendor access to build systems. Enforce strict segmentation between build infrastructure and production networks.

  • Scale identity protections. Enforce multi-factor authentication on every admin and remote access path, adopt phishing-resistant MFA methods for privileged accounts, and monitor conditional access logs for anomalous devices and geographies.

  • Treat DDoS and service disruption as part of the threat model. Ensure continuity plans, communications playbooks, and third-party scrubbing or CDN arrangements are in place for internet-facing public services. Smaller municipal operators should be integrated into national response playbooks.

  • Improve detection and info sharing. Invest in telemetry ingestion, cross-sector exercise programs, and rapid sharing of indicators between national CERTs, military cyber units, and allied partners. The Czech Republic’s stepped-up dialogues and Poland’s active reporting underline how bilateral cooperation narrows windows of attacker freedom.

Outlook and policy implications

Absent a strategic change in adversary incentives, expect continued hybrid campaigns that mix nuisance-level disruption with targeted espionage. Attackers will keep exploiting weak links: smaller suppliers, exposed administrative consoles, and human error. For NATO’s eastern members the calculus is simple. Tactical hardening reduces risk and strategic signaling matters too. Public attribution, coordinated sanctions, combined cyber exercises, and capacity building at municipal levels all help shift the cost curve for attackers. But those measures require investment, political will, and ongoing information sharing to be effective.

Final thought

For defenders on the Eastern flank, the operational imperative is to accept persistent pressure as the norm and to organize defenses accordingly. Improve fundamentals, share aggressively, and assume adversaries will probe until they find the low-friction entry point. The hardest part will not be discovering new attack techniques. It will be closing the routine gaps that let those techniques succeed repeatedly.