On Thursday morning, Moscow’s busy Fili district turned into an unprecedented traffic jam. Motherboard (via The Verge) reports that hackers used Russia’s Yandex Taxi ride-hailing app to order dozens of drivers to gather at Kutuzovsky Prospekt, One of the city’s main roads. The action caused traffic to stop on some already congested streets for about 40 minutes, and Yandex is working to resolve the situation.
“On the morning of September 1, Yandex taxi encountered Yandex spokesperson told Motherboard that attackers attempted to disrupt service – dozens of Drivers received bulk orders destined for Moscow’s Fili district. In a separate statement shared with Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency, Yandex said it redesigned its routing algorithm after the attack to prevent similar incidents in the future. One of the first known incidents of hackers using ride-hailing apps to cause traffic jams.
Multiple Twitter accounts claiming to be linked to Anonymous say the hacking group was behind the incident. On Friday, an anonymous account said the group worked with the Ukrainian IT Army, a voluntary group formed at the start of the war, to carry out the attack.
Anonymous previously claimed that the cyberattack led to multiple Several Russian government websites were down, including those belonging to the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense. “We have to support the Ukrainian people in the face of this series of attacks by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin,” the group said at the time.
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