TL;DR Hackers breached five Polish water treatment plants using default passwords and internet-exposed control systems. Poland is spending a billion euros on cybersecurity; 70 per cent of American water utilities fail the same basic standards. Hackers breached five Polish water treatment plants in 2025, gaining access to the industrial control systems that regulate pumps, filters, and chemical dosing. In some facilities, the attackers could have altered the operational parameters of equipment that determines what comes out of the tap. The attack vector, in every case, was unremarkable: weak passwords and control systems connected directly to the internet. Poland’s Internal Security Agency, the ABW, disclosed the breaches this week in its first public activity summary since 2014, before Russia annexed Crimea.…