Compromised dispatch system helped move taxis to front of the line

Two men have been charged with participating in a scheme that raked in big money by using a compromised dispatch system at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The Southern District of New York said that Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman were involved in a scheme that compromised the dispatch system. The taxi drivers have to wait in a holding lot. The computer-run dispatch system is used to assign drivers.

According to prosecutors, the defendants collaborated with Russians to compromise the dispatch system and cause taxis to be moved to the front of the line. Drivers were allowed to skip the line in exchange for $10 each time.

The operation ran off and on for a number of years. The scheme brought in as many as 1,000 taxi trips per day. Group chats were used to communicate with taxi drivers. They would send a message when the service was on. Abayev told paying drivers how to avoid being detected by authorities.

It's going to start in 2019. Abayev and Leyman were experimenting with different ways to get to the dispatch system. The methods included stealing tablets from the system, getting unauthorized access to the system, and paying someone to put a flash drive in a dispatch computer.

The members of the hacking scheme discussed their intentions to hack the dispatch system in messages to each other. Abayev sent a message to a Russian hacker about the Pentagon being hacked. Can we hack the taxis?

Two men have been charged with conspiring to commit computer intrusions. They could be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison if convicted. There is an indictment here.