Credit, Reuters
Ukraine and Russia claimed that their emergency alert applications were hacked on Sunday (1/11) night and began sending false alerts to residents, warning of airstrikes and other types of attacks, including nuclear ones.
Just before 11pm local time (6pm Brasília time), Ukraine's most widely used air raid warning app sent red level warnings across the country — with additional warnings of radiation, chemical attacks and civil unrest sent to residents in areas like Kiev.
An alert sent later by Telegram said: "The Air Alarm app has likely suffered hostile interference. There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and follow our updates on our channel."
A few hours later, Russian authorities said their app had been hacked. A secret Ukrainian group in Crimea (annexed by Russia), which spies on Russian activity, claimed that false alerts of nuclear attacks inside Russia had been sent to users.
In Ukraine, the Central Intelligence Agency stated that there was a failure in the application and asked the population to use other sources of information to clarify the situation regarding the threat of air strikes.
The warnings began at around 10:47 p.m., with the first warning issued in Kiev, which read: "Radiation threat. Radiation threat declared in Kiev."
The next message, written in Russian, arrived at 10:48 pm and said: "Hello! There will be a nuclear alert across Ukraine. Don't worry, it's the Oreshnik flying."
Oreshnik is the name of a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads.
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Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and President Vladimir Putin has suggested on several occasions an openness to the use of all weapons at Russia's disposal.
A third alert, at 10:49 p.m., in Ukrainian, said: "Chemical threat. There is a threat of a chemical attack in Kiev. Do not leave your home."
At 10:49 pm, a fourth alert reported a "Threat of street clashes. There are street clashes occurring in Kiev. Do not leave your home."
At 11:53 p.m., a series of "all resolved" messages were sent to the phones of users who had received the previous alerts from Kiev, declaring that each threat had been eliminated.
The Central Intelligence Agency said on Telegram that the alerts triggered a radiological risk warning on loudspeakers in the Lviv region, but added that there was no radiation threat.
The Air Alert app, maintained by Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, instantly informs users of the start and end of defense alerts. The ministry said it temporarily disabled the app for maintenance after it "apparently was compromised."
Although the false alarms were quickly contained, cybersecurity experts suggested that this was a new line of apparent Russian cyberattacks.
"I think this is the first time this has happened to an official Ukrainian information app, but I suspect it won't be the last," Herbert Lin, a cybersecurity and policy researcher at Stanford University, told the BBC.
Oleksander Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament's foreign affairs committee and a member of President Volodymyr Zelensky's Servant of the People party, told the BBC that the attack did not cause panic or extreme reactions. Merezhko said Ukrainians, especially in Kyiv, are used to "practically round-the-clock alerts."
"Secondly, this message was in Russian, which immediately aroused suspicion," he said.
"It's a very unpleasant fact, but it's part of cyber warfare and people in Ukraine understand that. It's possible and we're quite prepared for such possibilities."
If the alerts app is not working, the Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation advises the public to turn on notifications on their smartphones, pay attention to sirens and only consult official sources.
Several leaders from other regions also posted on Telegram that the application had apparently been hacked and that there was no local threat.
"For now, everything is calm in the region," said Svitlana Onyshchuk, head of the Ivano-Frankivsk region. The application had issued a red air raid alert for the eastern region of Ukraine between 10:50 pm and 11:57 pm.
Vinnytsia regional head Natalya Zabolotna said there had been a cyber attack on the Air Alert app and posted a warning on Telegram for people not to click on the link in the message, which could be a phishing attempt.
Just hours after the false alerts in Ukraine, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations said its app had been the target of a "massive cyberattack" that sent "false information to the public."
Ukrainian news agency UNN reported that the cyberattack sent false nuclear threat warnings inside Russia, citing Atesh, the Ukrainian group operating in Russian-controlled territory.
A purported screenshot of the fake alert, shared by Atesh on Telegram, warned users that "nuclear warheads mounted on P1-Sun drones [a Ukrainian attack drone] had been launched against all regions of Russia."
The warning, which included profanity, began with a message telling residents there was a "risk of rioting" and advised them to "urgently stock up on three weeks' worth of food and hide."
In a later statement, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations said experts were still working to restore the app to normal operation, but that the cyberattack did not affect the country's general warning system.
The statement stated that citizens were informed about alerts through multiple channels, including sirens and speakers, text messages, and TV and radio broadcasts, and that the app was "only an additional and complementary news service."
"The hacking of the mobile application did not have, and cannot have, any impact on the functioning of the public alert system," stated the ministry on its Telegram channel.
The warnings came just minutes before the end of a ceasefire located in the Kherson region, on Ukraine's front line, which was implemented last Tuesday and officially ended at 11pm on Sunday.
Fighting continued elsewhere while the ceasefire in Kherson was in effect, to allow civilians to evacuate the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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