Two men allegedly hacked JFK's taxi dispatch system with Russian help

Would you pay a small fee to skip the taxi wait line? The DOJ said that Abayev and Leyman focused on taxi drivers. Two men from Queens have been arrested for hacking into JFK's taxi dispatch system. Drivers were charged $10 to jump ahead of the taxi queue. Cars are usually sent out based on their order of arrival.

The hacking kept honest cab drivers from being able to pick up fares at JFK in the order in which they arrived. Thanks to this Office and the Port Authority, these defendants are facing serious criminal charges for their alleged cyber crimes.

According to the DOJ's indictment, both men explored a variety of ways to break into JFK's taxi dispatch system, from paying people to insert a flash drive into a computer, to stealing tablets and logging into the system over the internet. One of the Russian hackers received a message from Abayev, saying that the Pentagon was being hacked. Can we hack the taxis?

The pair used chat threads to communicate with drivers, some of whom had their $10 fee waiving if they could recruit others. Two counts of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion carries a maximum 10-year sentence in prison. Russian cyberattacks over the last ten years include the hack on Florida's voter databases in 2016 and the theft of NATO data.