Pirates Anonymous have distinguished themselves in a new coup in Russia. As evidenced by several videos circulating on social networks, Moscow was paralyzed by a huge traffic jam on Thursday, September 1, 2022. A real shambles caused by the hacking of the Yandex Taxi application.

It was thus enough for the pirates to order all the taxis available in the application in the same place, in this case Kutuzovsky Prospekt, equivalent, if we can say so, of the Champs Elysées in the Russian capital. The busy thoroughfare continues west to Vozdvizhenka Street and New Arbat via the Novoarbatsky Bridge which crosses the Moskva.

A hack of Yandez Taxi for almost an hour paralyzed Moscow

Suffice to say that blocking this artery guaranteed to cause a hell of a traffic jam throughout the city. For its part, Yandex Taxi is the most used application in Russia for ordering races. It must be said that the application took over from Uber following the signing of a merger agreement signed in 2017.

Of course, Yandex Taxi normally does not allow ordering all available taxis in one place. But the Anonymous hackers have obviously managed to circumvent the defenses of the application. Really thinking of recovering their fare, the taxis obviously followed the instructions given by Yandex Taxi without suspecting anything.

But as the images show, the couriers quickly piled up in Kutuzovsky Prospekt, to the point of blocking the artery and making traffic impossible in all the adjoining main roads. Paralyzing Moscow’s traffic was made easier by the usually heavy traffic in that city.

According to our colleagues from Hitek, the city was in 2021 the second with the most traffic jams in the world after London. According to Yandex, the attack lasted about 40 minutes, before normal service could be restored. The firm explains that it has improved its algorithms to avoid such attacks in the future.

Read also – War in Ukraine – are we on the verge of a global cyberwar?

It’s not their first attack on Anonymous since the outbreak of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. For example, they had hacked into thousands of surveillance cameras in order to display messages against the war on the control screens.

someone hacked #YandexTaxi and ordered all available taxis to Kutuzov Prospect in Moscow

Now there is a huge traffic jam with taxis.

It’s like James Bond movie. pic.twitter.com/IatuAEtA2i

—Russian Market (@runews) September 1, 2022