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What we know about the alert app hack in Ukraine and Russia

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

Ukraine's emergency notification platform began distributing false alerts on Sunday, warning citizens of nationwide air raids, street fighting in Kyiv, and potential chemical and radiological hazards. Within hours of the initial breach, Russian authorities confirmed that their comparable civil warning network had also been hijacked by unauthorized users. Both governments attribute the disruptions to cyber-attacks targeting their critical communication networks. Officials have not established if the two security breaches are linked or who carried them out.

Key points

  • Neither nation has identified the specific threat actors responsible for attacking the al…: Neither nation has identified the specific threat actors responsible for attacking the alert apps.
  • Investigators have not confirmed whether the nearly simultaneous breaches in both countri…: Investigators have not confirmed whether the nearly simultaneous breaches in both countries are connected.
  • Critical public warning infrastructure in both countries demonstrated vulnerability to un…: Critical public warning infrastructure in both countries demonstrated vulnerability to unauthorized digital manipulation.

Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1

Ukraine's emergency alert app issued a nationwide air raid warning, as well as alerts for a radiological threat, a chemical attack and street fighting in Kyiv on Sunday evening - all of which turned out to false.

A few hours later, Russia said its equivalent app had also issued false alerts, with both countries claiming their systems had been hacked.

It is still unclear who is to blame for the cyber-attacks and whether the two incidents are connected - the BBC's cyber correspondent Joe Tidy explains what we know so far.

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