The attack isn’t spectacular, but it has potential as an action movie opening scene. On September 1, hackers using the Yandex.Taxi application called dozens of taxi drivers at the same time at the same address, causing a huge traffic jam on Kutuzovski Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in central Moscow. . The drivers spent more than 40 minutes in traffic jams, paralyzing traffic in spite of themselves.
“Hackers tried to shut down the Yandex.Taxi service — several dozen drivers were ordered to the Fili district”, the company explained in a statement. Alerted to the anomaly, the company redirected the taxis concerned, and promises compensation for those who suffered the incident. She also indicated that the security of the service would be reinforced.
Yandex.Taxi, the equivalent of Uber in Russia, allows you to order a taxi from a search engine or a mobile application. She was even a partner of the American company, the two having merged in 2017, before Uber accelerated the sale of its shares after the start of the war in Ukraine. Note also that the taxi ordering application belongs to Yandex, often described as the “Russian Google”.
The famous group Anonymous claimed responsibility for the attack. The hackers say they worked hand in hand with the IT Army of Ukraine, a group backed by Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. In February 2022, the day after the invasion of Ukraine, the Anonymous collective declared entering into cyberwar against Russia.