Fake nuclear alerts hit phones in Ukraine, then in Russia, within hours
Ukraine's Air Alert app was hijacked on Sunday night and pushed false warnings of chemical and radiation threats and street fighting. Early on Monday, the Russian Emergencies Ministry's app sent fake notifications about nuclear warheads. Nobody has claimed either attack.
On Sunday night, phones across Ukraine lit up with warnings of nuclear, chemical and street-fighting threats. None of it was real. The app sending them, Air Alert (Povitriana Tryvoha), had been hijacked.
Shortly after 11pm Kyiv time, the Ukrainian Air Force posted a short message: the app had “probably come under enemy influence” and there was no radiation threat at all. Stay calm, it said, and follow the official channel.
What people were told
Besides the chemical and radiation scares, some users got messages claiming Russia had launched an Oreshnik hypersonic missile. The app’s own team confirmed “unauthorised interference”, switched off push notifications and took the service down. It said the app stores no personal data and urged people not to tap links in suspicious notifications. One regional governor, in Vinnytsia, warned it could be a phishing operation.
By about 2am Kyiv time the app was coming back in stages, with yellow and red alert levels and siren notifications restored but live targets removed from the map for now.
Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications blamed Russia. No group has claimed it.
Then it happened in Russia
A few hours later, in the early hours of Monday, Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said its own app had suffered a “massive cyberattack” and that the attackers had managed to send false information to the public. The fake notifications spoke of nuclear warheads launched at every region of the country. Again, nobody has owned up.
The night also marked the end of the local truce around Oleshky in southern Ukraine, which had allowed the first civilian evacuations last week.
Why a fake alert is worse than a missing one
An alert app is only as good as people’s trust in it. In Ukraine it is what tells people when to head for the shelter, often more than once a night. A fake nuclear warning does more than ruin one night. It teaches people to second-guess the next real one.
It is the same logic behind the attacks on US water systems earlier this year. The target is not the data. It is confidence in a service everyone relies on without thinking about it.
By Oliver Grant
Illustration: Tugadaily
