Yandex Taxi Was Hacked, Causing Traffic Jams In Moscow

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Online taxi services have solved many pain points of the niche. But like other apps, they have several shortcomings and vulnerabilities. Recently, a large group of tourists in Moscow encountered traffic jams. Wait, we understand that this sounds odd because Moscow is the world’s second most congested city, and there are always traffic jams. But this time, the incident was actually a cyberattack by a group of premeditated and organized hackers.

Vice reported that because of the cyberattack, dozens of taxis were called simultaneously. The attack happened on September 1. It brought many vehicles to a standstill on the way to Kutuzovsky Prospect, an already congested street.

A Yandex spokesperson confirmed that: “On the morning of September 1, Yandex Taxi encountered an attempt by attackers to disrupt the service—several dozen drivers received bulk orders to the Fili district of Moscow.”

The spokesman added that their security team solved the problem in less than an hour. “The security service of Yandex Taxi promptly stopped the attempts of artificial congestion of cars and improved the algorithm for detecting and preventing such attacks from preventing similar incidents in the future.”

For the time being, there is still no official statement on which hacker group carried out the attack. However, there is every reason to think that the attack is somehow related to the so-called IT Army of Ukraine.

Yandex Taxi Operates In Multiple Countries

By the way, back in 2017, Uber and Yandex Taxi merged their businesses in Russia and several Eastern European markets. In the new company, Uber holds 36.6% of the shares, while Yandex Taxi holds 59.3% of the shares.

Further reading: Life Threatening Data Leaks In Russia: Yandex.Ru Users Might Be At Risk

We tell this because many might think it’s a Russian online taxi service and it is more vulnerable than Uber or others in Western countries. Moreover, Yandex Taxi is an online taxi and food delivery business in Russia, the CIS, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. At the same time, the company boasts of the world’s leading developers of autonomous driving technology.