A hacked Ukrainian alert application sent a series of false warnings on Sunday night, escalating from reports of Russian drones and missiles to claims of imminent nuclear strikes, chemical attacks and fighting in Kyiv’s streets. Although the messages caused unease, many Ukrainians doubted their authenticity and did not panic.
Sofia Kochmar, a 34-year-old mother living in Lviv, said the reference to a nuclear threat initially frightened her. However, she began questioning the alerts when one message mentioned street fighting in Kyiv. Some notifications were written in Russian, and one included a link to a Telegram channel apparently associated with a hacker group.
Ukraine’s Air Force said within 15 minutes that the alert application had been compromised and that there was no radiation threat. More than an hour passed before messages confirming the situation was clear were issued.
Anastasiia Romanytska, a 29-year-old ballerina in Kyiv who does not use the application, said friends forwarded the warnings to her. She described an immediate physical stress reaction but said she soon suspected the messages were not genuine.
Several applications send air-raid notifications and display maps of areas under threat, using the same data as the official government-backed service. Yevhen Baliutov, a cybersecurity expert at Kyiv School of Economics, told the BBC that the incident appeared to involve a Russian hack. He warned that people who followed the Telegram link could have been exposed to disinformation, phishing attempts or data breaches.
Baliutov said cyberattacks and disinformation attempts were expected during the war. He also noted that the informal wording of the alerts could indicate the involvement of hacktivist groups rather than a government acting directly. He said Ukraine may have responded with a cyberattack against Russia’s emergency alert system, adding that both countries have similar cyberwarfare capabilities.
After the initial alarm, Kochmar said people in her work group chats began making jokes about the incident. The episode nevertheless highlighted the security risks facing a system on which millions of Ukrainians depend.
Baliutov said security needed to be built into such applications from the outset and warned that essential protections could not be skipped. After years of repeated warnings about attacks, Ukrainian authorities also face the challenge of keeping people alert while reassuring them that emergency systems are reliable and should be followed.
Sources: BBC News World.