Polish police arrest three Ukrainians found with hacking equipment

WARSAW, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Three Ukrainian men have been stopped in Warsaw with computer hacking equipment in their car and charged with offences linked to national defence, Polish police said on Monday.

The three were charged with having devices and programs adapted for “committing crimes, including damaging computer data of particular importance to national defence,” the police added.

The statement did not go into more detail on their suspected motivation, but said the force was “considering various scenarios”.

Authorities in NATO-member Poland have been on high alert for what they say is a Moscow-backed campaign of sabotage and cyberattacks, including an explosion on a railway track in November that authorities blamed on Ukrainians collaborating with Russian intelligence.

Russia dismisses such accusations as “Russophobia”.

Officers in central Warsaw stopped the men and the car they were travelling in was found to contain specialised hacking equipment, a spy device detector, SIM cards, hard drives and antennas that could be used to interfere with IT systems, police said in a statement.

The men, aged 39, 42 and 43, told them they were travelling around Europe and planned to go to Lithuania.

“The Ukrainian citizens were unable to determine the purpose of the items seized by officers,” police said. “They claimed to be IT specialists, and when asked more specific questions, they forgot their English and pretended not to understand what was being said.”

They were also charged with fraud and computer fraud, police said. They did not say when the arrest took place.

A court ruled that the three men arrested in Warsaw should be kept in pre-trial detention for three months.

(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Andrew Heavens)