‘Stay calm’: Ukraine says public air raid alert app sent false alerts after being hacked

Winnipeg/London: Ukraine’s public air raid alert app was hacked on Sunday, its air force said, and for a short time showed that Kyiv and other areas were subject to nuclear and chemical alerts and the threat of street combat.

One of the erroneous messages said Russia’s hypersonic Oreshnik missile had been deployed.

“The Air Alert app appears to have been subjected to enemy influence,” the air force said on Telegram about 10 minutes after the initial alerts. “There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and follow our updates on our channel!”

The abnormality later disappeared.

Ukraine’s Air Alert app warns residents when there is a threat of air strikes so they can take shelter.

London’s Telegraph and the BBC reported that four messages were posted to the app between 10.47pm and 10.49pm (Kyiv time).

The first, in Ukrainian, warned of a radiation threat. It was followed by a second, in Russian, that read: “Hi! There will be a nuclear alert across Ukraine. Don’t worry, it’s Oreshnik flying”, according to the BBC.

A third, again in Ukrainian, warned of a chemical threat and a fourth said there was a “street fighting threat”.

About an hour later, a number of all-clear messages were sent to users’ phones, the BBC said.

Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications, SPRAVDI, blamed Russia for the hack in a post on its X account.

Ukraine’s Ministry for Digital Transformation said the app was not in operation, but other means of alerting the public were functioning, as were air raid sirens.

In a separate event a few hours later, the mobile app of Russia’s emergencies ministry was hit by a massive cyberattack that resulted in the spread of false information to the public, state news agency TASS quoted the ministry as saying.

It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were linked.

The apparent hack came as civilians in Ukraine’s south-eastern Kherson region prepared for the end of a localised ceasefire that had marked the most significant truce between Kyiv and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began nearly five years ago.

The White House said US first lady Melania Trump helped to broker the limited truce, which began early on Tuesday and ended on Sunday evening (Kyiv time). The pause in hostilities allowed besieged residents in the front-line city of Oleshky to be evacuated in a rare joint operation.

Reuters, AP

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