It was all to let drivers skip the taxi wait line:
Would you pay a few bucks to skip an interminably long taxi wait line at the airport? That's essentially what Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman did, according to the DOJ, except they focused on taxi drivers. The two men, both from Queens, have been arrested for hacking into JFK's taxi dispatch system with the help of Russian nationals. From September 2019 and September 2021, they charged drivers $10 to jump ahead of JFK's taxi queue. Typically, those cars are sent out depending on their order of arrival.
According to the DOJ's indictment, both men explored a variety of ways to break into JFK's taxi dispatch system, from bribing people to insert a malware-filled flash drive into a computer, stealing tablets and logging into the system over Wi-Fi. Abayev at one point messaged one of the Russian hackers: "I know that the Pentagon is being hacked[.]. So, can't we hack the taxi industry[?]"
From the DOJ press release:
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: "As alleged in the indictment, these two defendants â with the help of Russian hackers â took the Port Authority for a ride. For years, the defendants' hacking kept honest cab drivers from being able to pick up fares at JFK in the order in which they arrived. Now, thanks to this Office's teamwork with the Port Authority, these defendants are facing serious criminal charges for their alleged cybercrimes."
[...] At various times between November 2019 and November 2020, ABAYEV and LEYMAN, working with others, successfully hacked the Dispatch System. They used their unauthorized access to alter the Dispatch System and move specific taxis to the front of the line, thereby allowing drivers of those taxis to skip other taxi drivers waiting in the line. ABAYEV and LEYMAN charged taxi drivers $10 each time they were advanced to the front of the line. Taxi drivers learned that they could skip the taxi line by paying $10 to members of the Hacking Scheme through word of mouth, and members of the Hacking Scheme offered some taxi drivers waivers of the $10 fee in exchange for recruiting other taxi drivers to pay the $10 fee to skip the taxi line. [...]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 28, @03:41PM (2 children)
Growing up in the '60s and '70s, we were accustomed to reading of hijackings at airports. Hacking at airports seems new and strange. I say, send these guys to the Hague, and let international law take it's course!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday December 28, @04:36PM (1 child)
This case actually is about hijacking people and I can deduce that.
Let's check background first, focus search only on publicly available information about the guys, such that they provided themselves to public before incident (so it's not doxing):
Daniel Abayev
Full Stack Developer (Oracle Jerusalem), Laboratory Technician (Intel), Datacenter Administrator (Ofek 324 Unit, IAF).
Nice career, bro.
Peter Leyman
EY Belgium Forensic & Integrity Services Executive Director
Fraud investigations. Due diligence investigations. Data quality and integrity. Forensic technology. Corporate intelligence. Litigation support.
Looks shady but legitimate.
So. Those clods both are actually professional cyber spies. And rather hard to link directly to Russia. Maybe they just used a Russian VPN or chat service? Anyway, Israel and NATO are still a connective step closer to them than Russia is.
Now the real question: what about JFK Airport taxi queue?
This is clear: when someone has ability to manipulate queue data structure directly, he can reshuffle or insert own payload at higher priority. But this is just a tool to achieve something.
But, if an intelligence agency has such capability on specific airport taxi queue, this enables them to change the natural sequence of taxi cars by inserting their own operative car into queue. This comes very instrumental when a pursued person of interest shall be hijacked.
Those idiots just overdid for their greed what they were supposed to do by orders.
The edge of ċ¤Şç cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 28, @07:37PM
Russian nationals/mobsters probably aren't hard to come by in New York City.
Unless, of course, they never were in the kidnapping business. Selling access to a secret spy system for $10 (and then encouraging customers to spread the word) seems a bit unlikely to me. Perhaps we should instead consider that evidence against that degree of spy stuff?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 28, @04:33PM (1 child)
I was a bit confused..."I thought JFK was in a presidential convertible when he was shot? And there were Russian hackers back then?"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 28, @04:56PM
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/22/deconstructed-jfk-files-cia/ [theintercept.com]
Was waiting on this transcript to get finished.