Ukraine and Russia said their public emergency alert apps were hacked on Sunday night, sending false air raid warnings that included nuclear, radiation, chemical and street-fighting alerts. In Ukraine the bogus messages began at about 22:47 local time, with a Kyiv warning reading "Radiation threat. Radiation threat declared in Kyiv," a Russian-language message at 22:48 referencing an Oreshnik missile and a nuclear alert, and a 22:49 chemical-warning message; all-clear notices followed at 23:53. Ukraine's Central Intelligence Agency said there had been a failure in the app, warned there was no radiation threat and urged people to use other information sources; the Ministry of Digital Transformation temporarily disabled the Air Alert app for maintenance after it had apparently been compromised. A few hours later Russian authorities said their app had been hacked and a Ukrainian espionage group claimed fake nuclear warnings had been sent to users inside Russia. Stanford cyber policy scholar Herbert Lin called the incident a likely new line in apparent Russian cyberattacks, and Oleksander Merezhko of Ukraine's parliament said the attack did not cause panic and that the Russian-language messages raised immediate suspicion. The false alerts also triggered a radiation hazard loudspeaker signal in the Lviv region, which authorities said was not a real threat.
