Hackers hit Ukraine's air alert app, then Russia's EMERCOM app, with false attack warnings

Hitcore, a previously unknown group, says it targeted Ukraine's air alert app with fake alerts of radiation and missile launches. Officials in Kyiv and Moscow say the systems were taken offline, and Ukraine says no personal data was leaked.

Hackers knocked out Ukraine's air alert app on the evening of 1 November 2026, sending false warnings of radiation, street fighting and a chemical attack. Hours later, in the night of 2 November, they broke into the mobile app of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, EMERCOM. Russian users received notifications saying nuclear warheads had been launched at all regions of Russia.

Hitcore, a previously unknown hacking group, said it carried out the hack by compromising a system administrator's work computer with a phishing file, then integrating fake notifications with links to hostile Telegram channels into the app. The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation said the app was temporarily disabled, sirens and general notification systems worked normally, and urged people to enable system emergency notifications on smartphones.

The Record, which covers cybersecurity, and Komsomol'skaya Pravda, a Russian tabloid newspaper, described Hitcore as newly founded and previously unknown. The notifications also warned of a missile called Oreshnik. The fake messages urged people not to go outside.

The Russian ministry said the app had come under what it called a massive hacker attack, and that specialists took its services offline, isolated them and removed the false information. It asked the public to remain calm and to trust only official sources, including the ministry's website and its social media accounts. Two groups claimed the attack, but the claims are disputed: the pro-Ukrainian Atesh movement, and a group calling itself DC8044, which said it had entered the app through its programming interface.

Ukraine said no personal data was leaked.