Source : Reuters
KYIV, November 1 – Ukraine’s public air raid alert app was hacked on Sunday night, sending users false warnings of a radiation threat, a chemical attack and street fighting in the capital before its developers switched off notifications and temporarily suspended the service, officials said.
Reuters reported on X early on November 2, 2026, Malaysia time, that the Ukrainian air force had said the public air raid alert app had been hacked. “The Air Alarm application has probably been subjected to hostile interference. There is no radiation threat! Stay calm and follow our updates on our channel,” the air force said on Telegram, the BBC reported. Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat confirmed to AFP that the app “has been” hacked.
Four false alerts in three minutes
The false messages began at about 22:47 local time (20:47 GMT), the BBC reported. The first, in Ukrainian, read: “Radiation threat. Radiation threat declared in Kyiv.” A second, written in Russian, said a nuclear alert would be issued across Ukraine and told users not to worry because “it’s Oreshnik flying”, a reference to a Russian ballistic missile. Two more alerts followed at 22:49, the first of them in Ukrainian, warning of a chemical attack on Kyiv and of street fighting in the city and telling people not to go outside. A series of all-clear messages was then sent.
In the western Lviv region, a radiation hazard signal was briefly played on loudspeakers because of the app, Ukrainian authorities said, adding that there was no radiation danger, according to the BBC. Vinnytsia regional governor Natalya Zabolotna called the incident a cyberattack and warned people not to click on a link in the message.
App suspended, no personal data at risk
The app’s team later confirmed the hack on Telegram. “Third parties carried out unauthorised interference in the application’s work. We have disabled push notifications and temporarily suspended the application,” the team said in a statement translated from Ukrainian, according to Ukrainska Pravda and Ukrinform. It said the app does not store personal data, so users faced no threat, apologised and said it was working to restore the service.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the nationwide alert system was operating normally, as threat signals are passed to regional administrations and then to street sirens, and urged people to rely on loudspeakers and official channels, the news agency UNN reported. Kyiv city authorities said a separate app for the capital, Kyiv Digital, was unaffected, AFP reported.
Kyiv blames Russia
The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation warned that threat-level information shown on the app “does not correspond to reality”, while SPRAVDI, Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications, blamed Russia for the hack in a post on X, AFP reported. There was no immediate comment from Moscow.
The Air Alert app, supported by Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, is used across the country to warn people in real time of incoming Russian missile and drone attacks, often giving them only minutes to reach shelter. The hack came minutes after a six-day local ceasefire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in the Kherson region expired, AFP said. LNA will continue to follow developments.
Credit : Reuters’ X, with reporting from the BBC, AFP, Ukrainska Pravda, Ukrinform and UNN.
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