KYIV, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia said their emergency alert apps had been hacked overnight, sending false warnings to citizens about impending air raids, chemical and nuclear attacks.
The warnings coincided with the expiry of a six-day local ceasefire brokered by US first lady Melania Trump in a small area of southern Ukraine — the longest such pause in fighting since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Ukraine's public air raid app started to send false alerts just before 11 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Sunday for the capital Kyiv and other areas warning of radiation and chemical attacks and also the risk of street combat in some areas.
One of the fake alarms said Russia had launched a hypersonic Oreshnik missile — which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead —- and that a nuclear alert had been declared across Ukraine.
Ukraine's air force said shortly afterwards on the Telegram messaging chat that the alert system appeared to have been hacked by Russia, noting that the alerts were broadcast in the Russian language. The Ukrainian language is compulsory for all official communications in Ukraine.
"The air alert app appears to have been subjected to enemy influence," the air force statement said. "There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and follow our updates on our channel!"
All-clear messages were sent shortly afterwards for each of the alerts and Ukraine's Ministry for Digital Transformation said the emergency app had been temporarily suspended, but other means of alerting the public were functioning, as were air raid sirens.
RUSSIAN MINISTRY SAYS ITS APP WAS ALSO HIT BY CYBERATTACK
A few hours later, Russian state news agency TASS quoted the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Moscow as saying its mobile app had been hit by a massive cyberattack that resulted in the spread of false information to the public.
Atesh, a pro-Ukrainian hacking group, posted a screenshot of the alert message on its Telegram channel early on Monday, with a message saying: "The Ministry of Emergency Situations app has been hacked!"
However, the ministry played down the impact, saying it was not one of its main public warning system channels, but just what it called a supplementary source of information.
A fake message posted by the hackers, seen by Reuters, did not attempt to mimic an official communication and was laced with colloquialisms, profanities and derogatory language about Russia, calling its regions "swamps".
The fake message told Russians that nuclear warheads had been launched against all Russian regions and advised people to stock up on three weeks of food and take shelter in their cellars.
The Russian ministry said in a statement on Telegram that its experts were working to restore the app to normal operation.
"We ask the public to remain calm and to trust only official sources of information — the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations’ website and the department’s official social media accounts," it said.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski, Bogdan Kochubey, Jekaterīna Golubkova and Lina Golovnya; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Gareth Jones)
