So how did a phone app reach a loudspeaker?

Transcript

1. On Sunday night,
2. some loudspeakers in Ukraine's Lviv region played a radiation warning.
3. There was no radiation threat.
4. Local officials blamed a phone app.
5. The app, Air Alert, tells millions of Ukrainians when to go to a shelter.
6. At 22:47 that night, it warned of radiation in Kyiv.
7. A minute later came a message in Russian.
8. It said a nuclear alert was coming for all of Ukraine:
9. "Don't worry, an Oreshnik is on its way."
10. Oreshnik is a Russian nuclear-capable missile.
11. Then it warned of a chemical attack, and of street fighting in Kyiv.
12. One independent alert map logged 122 false alerts in 7 minutes.
13. 15 minutes in, Ukraine's air force posted: "There is no radiation threat whatsoever."
14. Just after midnight, the app's team said outsiders had interfered with it,
15. and switched off its notifications.
16. So how did a phone app reach a loudspeaker?
17. Lviv's officials said on Monday that during the app's failure,
18. the official alert map turned red.
19. And the speakers that sounded were mostly small warning systems at individual sites,
20. which take their signal from that map.
21. Two companies built Air Alert in 2022.
22. Officials in each region send it the alert, and the app passes it on.
23. It reaches 6.7 million daily users, by the company's count in March.
24. Other alert maps,
25. some sirens and the doors of more than 400 shelters take the same data.
26. Two things were faked.
27. Alerts, which reached phones, maps and speakers.
28. And free-text messages, like the one about Oreshnik.
29. Who got in, and how?
30. Ukraine's government communications centre blamed Russia, pointing to the Russian text.
31. A Russian Telegram channel, Mash, reported that a group called Hitcore claimed it,
32. saying an administrator had opened a file they sent.
33. AP and NBC could not verify that.
34. Ajax, one of the two companies,
35. didn't answer a Ukrainian outlet's questions on who or how.
36. About 3 hours after the first fake alert, Russia's emergencies app was hit too.
37. The ministry said someone broke into its control panel
38. and sent a false message to 33 regions.
39. Reports say it warned of a nuclear strike.
40. A Kyiv hacking group, DC8044, said its followers did it, in response.
41. That hasn't been verified either.
42. That night, both governments said
43. their national warning systems were working normally.
44. The speakers in Lviv were mostly small systems that listen to the alert map.
45. Russia's ministry says it found the weak spot.
46. One of Ukraine's app makers says the investigation is still going.