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On the 1st, Ukraine's air raid warning app briefly displayed false information claiming there was a radiation threat in the capital, Kiiv. It appears that the app was hacked. This was announced by the Ukrainian Air Force.
"The Air Raid Warning app has probably experienced hostile interference. There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and check the Air Force channels for the latest information," the Ukrainian Air Force said on the Telegram communication app.
Ukraine's Central Intelligence Agency also announced in a Telegram post that the app had experienced an outage. He urged people to use other sources of information to check the status of air raid threats.
4 false alarms in 2 minutes
The false alert was sent around 10:47 p.m. local time on the 1st. The first message read: "Radioactivity threat. A radioactivity threat has been declared in Kivu."
Then, at 10:48 p.m., a second alert was sent in Russian: ``Hello! A nuclear alert has been issued for all of Ukraine. Don't worry. It's Oleshnik that's coming.'' Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile developed by Russia.
At 10:49 p.m., a third alert was issued in Ukrainian that read, "Chemical weapons threat. There is a risk of chemical weapons attack in Kiv. Do not go out."
A fourth alert was sent at 10:49 p.m. ``The threat of urban warfare. Urban warfare is occurring in Kiv. Please do not go out.''
Users then received a notification on their smartphones informing them that the series of warnings had been lifted.
Ukraine's Central Intelligence Agency said in a separate post that an air raid warning app had caused warnings about the danger of radiation to be broadcast over loudspeakers in the western region of Lviv. There is no actual threat, the agency added.
The agency urged citizens to turn on notifications on their smartphones, pay attention to sirens and only check official sources.
Natalia Zabolotna, the governor of central Vinnytsia Oblast, announced on Telegram that her air raid warning app had been attacked by a cyberattack. We warned you not to open the link provided in the alert notification.
Ukraine's air raid warning app is operated with support from the country's Ministry of Digital Transformation. The system is designed to immediately notify users of the issuance and cancellation of defense alerts.
(English article: Ukraine air raid app apparently hacked as users receive false radiation threat, Air Force says)
