Arriving travellers line up to get taxi exterior of Terminal 4 at the JFK airport in New York.
Jewel Samad | AFP | Getty Photos
Two New York adult males ended up arrested for conspiring with Russian nationals to hack the taxi dispatch process at John F. Kennedy Global Airport so they could manipulate the line and demand motorists for obtain to the front of the queue, federal prosecutors reported Tuesday.
Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman, the two 48, have been taken into custody on Tuesday morning in Queens and billed with two counts of conspiracy to commit pc intrusion, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York announced.
Starting in 2019, the two allegedly worked with hackers based in Russia to infiltrate JFK’s taxi dispatch program by bribing somebody to put in malware on desktops linked to the system, thieving laptop or computer tablets and employing Wi-Fi to split in, prosecutors alleged.
“I know that the Pentagon is remaining hacked… so cannot we hack the taxi field[?]” Abayev allegedly texted one particular of the hackers in November 2019, according to the indictment versus him.
As soon as the hackers effectively attained obtain to the dispatch process, Abayev and Leyman ended up ready to go specific taxis to the front of the line and started charging drivers $10 to skip the queue, prosecutors alleged.
Normally, taxi drivers seeking to choose up travelers at JFK hold out in a keeping great deal before they’re dispatched to a distinct terminal in the purchase in which they arrived. The course of action can choose several hours, and the wait around time can have a sizeable impact on how a lot revenue a taxi driver is ready to receive in a working day.
Prosecutors estimate Abayev and Leyman were ready to manipulate as numerous as 1,000 taxi visits a working day all through the system of the scheme, which went on from about November 2019 to November 2020.
“As alleged in the indictment, these two defendants — with the aid of Russian hackers — took the Port Authority for a trip,” Damian Williams, U.S. Lawyer for the Southern District, mentioned in a statement.
Motorists uncovered about the scheme by way of phrase of mouth, and some had been even permitted to cut the line for totally free — if they agreed to recruit other cabbies that were ready to pay out, prosecutors alleged.
“For years, the defendants’ hacking held truthful cab motorists from getting equipped to decide on up fares at JFK in the get in which they arrived,” Williams mentioned.
The suspects are slated to seem right before Decide Gabriel Gorenstein later Tuesday. They confront up to 10 several years in jail if they’re convicted. It is not very clear if they experienced retained an legal professional.
