People in many places in Brazil suddenly received a mysterious "extreme alert" on their mobile phones in the early hours of Saturday morning local time. The Brazilian federal government subsequently stated that it initially determined that the incident was probably caused by hackers intruding into the national early warning system.
According to reports, this unauthorized alert first appeared in the southern state of Parana, and within minutes it popped up on mobile phones in major cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, causing panic and confusion among many residents. The alert contains only one word, "misantropi4", which is a variant of the Portuguese word "misantropia" (misanthropy, misanthropy), replacing the final letter "a" with the number "4" in leetspeak, a common word used by hackers.
The alert is classified as an "extreme alert" by the system and is sent through an emergency SMS broadcast system similar to the US "Wireless Emergency Alert" (WEA, commonly known as Amber Alert), which can push short emergency messages directly to mobile devices in a specific geographical area without relying on numbers and operators. Brazil's National Civil Protection Department stated that its early warning platform has been offline immediately after being attacked by a suspected hacker, and will only be reactivated after all security conditions are restored.
Brazil's National Civil Defense stressed in a statement that the false alarm was triggered remotely by "personnel not affiliated with the national civil defense and protection system." "The message sent was an 'extreme alert' type message with the word 'misanthropy' - a word that means misanthropy - and was likely a hacker attack," the statement read.
The Sao Paulo State Civil Protection Department also issued a statement stating that this alert was not issued by any of its staff and that no incident has been recorded so far that would warrant the issuance of such an "extreme alert." The statement also mentioned that the Cellbroadcast tool used to send severe and extreme alerts is managed by Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) and has been temporarily suspended. São Paulo Civil Defense said it had contacted Anatel and other relevant agencies to investigate the specific source of the information.
In Sao Paulo, a city with a population of over 10 million, some residents reported that in addition to receiving push notifications through the Cellbroadcast platform, they also received text messages (SMS) with the same content. The government of Parana State in southern Brazil stated that the local civil defense department did not trigger any such warning, and there is currently no severe disaster forecast for Curitiba and other places. The state government said it had contacted National Civil Protection and Anatel over the matter to coordinate the investigation.
Rio de Janeiro's Civil Defense also confirmed that no official agency issued the alert. Rio said the information users received "results from an instability in the IDAP/Cellbroadcast alert delivery system," a platform run by the federal government's National Civil Protection Agency. Rio Civil Defense also pointed out that there are currently no high-risk situations related to natural disasters that would warrant issuing warnings to the public, and authorities will continue to monitor the situation. Some Rio residents also said they received text messages related to the alert.
So far, CNN Brazil has asked the national telecommunications agency Anatel about the incident, but has not yet received a response. Official departments are still tracing the technical details and responsible party of the suspected hacker intrusion, and the public continues to express concerns about the security risks of critical emergency systems being "hijacked" in the middle of the night.