Hackers cause panic by sending 'alien invasion warnings' to millions of Brazilians.



A hacker group infiltrated Brazil's national emergency alert system during the night of June 19-20, 2026, sending false alerts to residents of at least seven cities claiming an 'imminent alien attack.' The system was shut down at 1:30 a.m., causing widespread disruption as emergency alerts sounded on smartphones across the country.

ETs? Susto com alerta extremo da Defesa Civil Nacional vira meme | G1

https://g1.globo.com/tecnologia/noticia/2026/06/20/memes-alerta-extremo-defesa-civil.ghtml

Hackers send fake alien invasion alerts to millions of Brazilians overnight - Dexerto
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/hackers-send-fake-alien-invasion-alerts-to-millions-of-brazilians-overnight-3377880/

Cellphone Alert System Breached in Brazil, Message Sent in Leetspeak - Slashdot
https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/06/20/175205/cellphone-alert-system-breached-in-brazil-message-sent-in-leetspeak

According to the local newspaper G1 Globo, residents of Belo Horizonte , a city in southeastern Brazil, received a loud alert from the Civil Defense Agency saying, 'Protect yourselves, it's an alien attack, we've arrived.' The following is an excerpt from the alert posted on X.




In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, although the alarms were not as intense as in Belo Horizonte, 'extreme alert' level warnings were also sent. The message sent contained the characters 'misantropi4,' which is an alphanumeric representation of part of the Portuguese word 'misantropia' (mistrust of people), a technique commonly used by hackers called ' leatspeak .'



Brazil's National Civil Defense Agency has announced that the platform used to issue alerts has been compromised by hackers. According to the agency, the alerts may have been triggered remotely by an unauthorized party. The case has been handed over to the Federal Police for investigation, but as of the time of writing, the suspect has not been identified.

On X, an account named '@mizantropiaz' posted a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, demonstrating how they hijacked the alarm system. The original post has been deleted, but it has been republished by the cybersecurity newsletter International Cyber Digest.




According to International Cyber Digest, an investigation has revealed that at least one IT official in the Brazilian government was infected with the information-stealing malware 'Infostealer.' The IT official, who was working on government infrastructure on his home gaming PC, was infected with the malware via a malicious game installer, and browser information containing passwords and government VPN credentials was stolen. It has also been pointed out that the threat actor may have used very old credentials that the government employee had not changed for many years, raising concerns about the Brazilian government's low level of security awareness.




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in Security, Posted by log1e_dh