Millions of Russians were hit by a radio hacked message which falsely alerted listeners to rush to their air raid shelters.
Russia was hit by a suspected new hack today with millions of people told by commercial radio stations to rush to air raid shelters because of an imminent missile attack.
The emergency message came on many stations in multiple cities across at least four time zones.
Today’s message interrupted programmes to announce with a siren blaring: “An air alert is being announced. Everyone, go to the shelters immediately. Attention! Attention! The threat of a missile strike.”
Cities hit by the message included: Belgorod, Stary Oskol, Ufa, Kazan, Novouralsk, Novosibirsk, Pyatigorsk, Tyumen, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, and Magnitogorsk, and a number of places inside the Moscow region.
The regional government in Belgorod, which borders Ukraine and has seen real attacks in recent months, said: “information about a missile strike and an air alert on one of the radio frequencies in Belgorod is fake.”
“One of the radio stations on the morning of February 22 was hacked, presumably from the Ukrainian side.”
Although it is unclear where the alleged hacking came from
.
The Russian Emergencies Ministry said: "A hacker attack on the servers of several commercial radio stations in some regions of the country resulted in the airing of information about an alleged air raid alert and the threat of a missile strike.
“The Russian Emergencies Ministry reports that this information is fake and does not correspond to reality.”
Among the stations hit across different regions were Energy FM, Relax FM, Business FM, Humour FM and Autoradio.
Yuri Peryazev, the head of the Civil Defence and Emergency Situations of the Sovetsky district, Novosibirsk denied any missile strikes in Siberia.
“We're doing fine. There is no air alert,” he said.
“We are dealing with this issue,” said a spokesman for Gazprom Media, which is behind several hacked stations.
“This will not happen again in the near future.”
It follows an embarrassing hacking attack yesterday that saw Vladimir Putin’s keynote state of the nation speech being blacked out on the online sites of major state TV stations.
