Yandex Taxi Hacked
Russia has been one of the main targets of hackers since the country launched a war against Ukraine. The most recent attack was targeted against Yandex Taxi, a ride hailing service.
The news first came out on reddit.com. Yandex Taxi belongs to Yandex, Russia's leading IT corporation, also known as Russian Google.
One should note that the EU sanctioned the company's co-founder Arkady Volozh for “de-ranking and removing,” any info related to Russian attacks against Ukraine.
About the incident
Once Yandex Taxi app was hacked, the anonymous threat actors made a massive traffic jam in Moscow, Russia.
On 1st September 2022, the drivers complained after they saw an unusual gathering of Taxis in Moscow's western area.
It happened because the hackers booked all the available taxis to a same address, and a massive traffic jam happened as various Yandex Taxi drivers got stuck due to being trapped in a particular location.
The cabs were directed towards Kutuzovsky Prospekt, one of the main avenues in Moscow, it is also famous for the Stalinist-era building known as Hotel Ukraina (Hotel Ukraine).
The traffic jam was there for three hours. Yandex's security team immediately looked into the issue and promised to better the algorithm to avoid such incidents from happening again in the future.
Who is behind the attack?
The online hacktivist group Anonymous claims responsibility for the attack. Someone compromised the Yandex app and did a frustrating mix-up of taxis.
The hackers avoided the company's security mechanisms and made multiple fake orders, directing all the drivers to a single location.
In a similar incident that happened last year, Yandex in its blog post said:
"This is just one of many attacks aimed not only at Yandex but also at many other companies in the world. The attacks have been going on for several weeks, their scale is unprecedented, and their source is a new botnet about which little is known so far."
