On September 1, 2022, Yandex Taxi service, one of the largest in Russia, started getting a lot of orders with the same pick up point and destination. The pick up point was outside the Hotel Ukraine, located on Kutuzov Prospect, a major road in Moscow.
This led to many taxis trying to reach the pick up point.
For 40 minutes, there was a massive jam on this sector.
Within this time, the taxi company realised that they were under a cyber attack and stopped it.
The chaos on the road was cleared by the police within an hour.
The company will deal with compensation to the drivers in due course of time.
Traffic jams are not uncommon in Moscow, one of the busiest cities in the world. However, this is the first known instance of a hack leading to traffic chaos.
The company, Yandex Taxi, has said in a statement that since the attack they have strengthened (improved) their systems to protect them from such attacks in future.