National Civil Defense says the system was hacked and triggered a false alert; see what is known

Rio de Janeiro resident shows extreme alert received on his cell phone with the word "misanthropy".
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Residents from different regions of the country reported having received, between the night of Friday (19) and the early hours of this Saturday (20), extreme sound alerts and text messages attributed to the Civil Defense. The case drew attention due to its unusual content: on some cell phones, only the word "misanthropy" appeared; in others, disjointed messages with writing errors.
The National Civil Defense reported that the Defesa Civil Alerta platform was taken offline at 1:30 am this Saturday (20), after suffering an invasion. According to the agency, the shot was made remotely by someone without authorization and may have been the result of a hacker attack.
"The National Secretariat for Protection and Civil Defense of the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development will contact the Federal Police and will take steps to reconnect the system as quickly as possible, when all security conditions are reestablished," stated the agency.
Before confirming the invasion, state authorities had already informed that they had not issued alerts. The Civil Defense of Paraná said that there was no risk situation and called the National Civil Defense and Anatel to investigate the case.
The Civil Defense of São Paulo also stated that it did not send any message. The agency reported that Cell Broadcast technology, used for severe and extreme alerts, is managed by Anatel and said it contacted the agency.
For technology expert Thiago Ayub, technology director at Sage Networks, there are at least two initial hypotheses that could guide the investigation.
The first possibility, according to him, is that the software used to receive messages from authorities and forward them to telephone networks has been compromised. In this scenario, someone could have accessed the system with legitimate credentials or exploited a flaw to trigger messages without authorization.
The second hypothesis raised by the expert is remote access to public server computers that have authorization to operate this system. In this case, the attacker could pose as a legitimate user to send the alerts.
Ayub points out, however, that these hypotheses help to explain how an invasion of this type could have happened, but that there is still no confirmation as to who was responsible for triggering the messages.
What does "misanthropy" mean?
The word "misanthropy" caught the attention of users and became the target of searches on the internet. According to the Michaelis dictionary, the term means aversion or rejection of humanity, and can also refer to social isolation, melancholy or deep sadness.
On social media, the message quickly became a meme. Some internet users joked about the situation and associated the alert with fictional scenarios, such as alien invasions and mysterious messages.
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Source: G1