Dozens of drivers working for Yandex Taxi in Moscow just had a frustrating day. Hackers belonging to the Anonymous collective have breached the app, sending dozens of cars to the same location, provoking a traffic jam.
The Anonymous collective has commented on their Twitter page that this breach was just a latest part of their hacking campaign against Russia, dubbed ‘OpRussia.’
According to Russia’s cyber policy expert Oleg Shakirov, hackers likely bypassed Yandex’s safety measures, creating multiple fake orders that prompted drivers to simultaneously go to the same location.
This is not the first hacker attack against Russian infrastructure, and probably not the last either. Since the beginning of Russian-Ukraine conflict, Kyiv succeeded in rallying an international IT army to help it fight the digital war. Anonymous, Ukraine’s IT Army, Hacker Forces, and many other hacktivist groups started targeting Russia’s private and state-owned enterprises.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian groups have not sat still, returning the favour with DDoS attacks against countries supporting Ukraine, including Finland, Italy, Romania and more.