Hackers Hijack Ukrainian and Russian Alert Apps With Fake Nuclear and Radiation Warnings
Kyiv residents got “radiation threat” alerts; hours later Russians were told warheads had launched. Alex Jones warned it could spark a NATO–Russia showdown.
Late Sunday night, both sides of the Ukraine war woke up to fake end-of-the-world alerts.
Shortly before 11 p.m. local time on Nov. 1, one of Ukraine’s main air-raid apps issued its highest level of warnings nationwide, along with alerts of radiation, chemical attacks and street fighting, The Washington Post reported. “Radiation threat. Radiation threat declared in Kyiv,” read one.
Ukrainian officials quickly flagged that the system had probably been compromised. A Russian hacking group, Hitcore, later claimed responsibility, telling the Russian outlet Mash it gained access after an administrator downloaded a malicious file. Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said the hack did not affect the operations of Ukraine’s security and defense forces.
A few hours later, users of the Russian emergencies ministry app received false warnings that nuclear warheads had been launched. Russian authorities called it “a massive cyberattack” that sent “fake information to the public,” and said it did not affect the main alert system of sirens, SMS, television and radio warnings.
Alex Jones put the incident at the top of his Monday broadcast. “NUCLEAR WAR ALERT!” he posted on X, saying reports of an emergency-alert hack “Falsely Announcing Nuclear War Had Begun Raise Fears Of A NATO–Russia Showdown!”
Jones’s warning of a hacker-triggered war goes beyond what has been reported: neither government has said the hacks were meant to provoke a nuclear exchange, and both said their core military and alert systems were unaffected. But his larger point — that the machinery of war rests on systems that can be hijacked with a single downloaded file — is hard to dismiss. A false launch warning landing during a crisis is the kind of scenario arms-control experts have worried about for decades.
The scare came as Washington weighed whether to resume strikes on Iran and days after Jones and Tucker Carlson warned of a possible nuclear escalation. For America First viewers wary of foreign wars, it was a reminder of how fast things could go wrong.
