A cyber attack has struck the official mobile application of Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. Hackers broke into the app, which is used to keep the public constantly alerted to drone attacks from enemy countries and other emergency dangers. After the breach, the cyber criminals sent false nuclear attack warnings to the mobile phones of Russian citizens, causing serious anxiety and confusion across the country.
At the same time, Ukraine’s Air Force and its Centre for Countering Disinformation said their own alert systems had also come under cyber attack. The intrusion spread a false fear of radiation in Ukraine as well. Notably, the emergency warning systems of both countries were targeted within hours of the expiry of a temporary ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and Russia in the Kherson region.
Russia’s Emergency Ministry told the public through social media that the nuclear warnings received after a massive cyber attack on its app were all false information.
History has seen occasions when technical faults or false alerts brought the threat of nuclear war. In 1983, during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the Soviet early-warning system falsely signalled that American missiles had been launched. Command centre duty officer Stanislav Petrov acted astutely and identified it as a technical fault in the computer system, narrowly averting a serious nuclear war. Earlier, a similar error in US command centre computers had produced false warnings that Russia was launching a nuclear attack, leading the US to ready its warplanes.
The cyber attack on the emergency networks of Russia and Ukraine has triggered fear internationally. Security experts warn that such cyber operations by hostile actors against digital systems, by sending false signals, could threaten world peace at any moment.