Polish ruling party reports attack on its website before election

WARSAW (Reuters) -The website of Poland's ruling Civic Platform party was hit by a cyberattack on Friday, a senior party official said, hours before the start of a campaign blackout before the first round of Sunday's presidential election.

Liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a senior member of PO, is pitted against historian Karol Nawrocki, who runs Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, and far-right nationalist Slawomir Mentzen.

"Since 9:00 a.m. a DDoS attack has been ongoing on the http://platforma.org pages. The main PO page and the additional one, intended for campaign donations, have been temporarily disabled," the head of Prime Minister Donald Tusk's chancellery, Jan Grabiec, wrote on social media platform X.

"We are working with CERT NASK (the national research institute dealing with cybersecurity) to restore functionality."

European governments have been on high alert for signs of electoral interference since Romania cancelled an ongoing presidential election in December after allegations of Russian interference, which Moscow denied.

Civic Platform's IT systems were also hit by a cyberattack in April.

(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Timothy Heritage)