Overview
- Late on Sunday night the Ukrainian Air Alert app sent false warnings including radiation and nuclear threats before developers and the Air Force disabled push notifications and took the service offline.
- Hours later Russia reported a separate "massive" cyberattack on its civil‑protection app that also pushed false messages to users, and officials said they were working to restore the service.
- Attribution is contested: Ukraine's strategic communications centre accused Russia, a pro‑Russian group called Hitcore claimed the Ukrainian hack in some reports, and Moscow has not publicly named perpetrators for its own incident.
- The false alerts reached millions — Air Alert has about 6.7 million daily users — but authorities said there was no real radiation or chemical event and fallback channels such as sirens and official Telegram outlets were used.
- Security experts and European officials warned the incidents show warning systems are now a target in the conflict, heightening civilian risk, creating room for reciprocal cyberoperations, and raising concerns about further escalation.