As the old saying goes: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
That’s a mindset that’s been fully embraced by Riley Walz, a 23-year-old “tech prankster” who runs a popular account on X-formerly-Twitter. Over the weekend, Walz went viral after posting about the “world’s first Waymo DDoS,” a reference to distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DDoS is a type of malicious cyberattack in which a hacker tries to drown their target in a swarm of simultaneous requests, typically with the goal of overwhelming networks and disrupting service. Put in real-life terms, it’s like if a crowd of protestors swarmed a restaurant, making it hard for real customers to get in, effectively wasting the businesses’ time and losing them money.
Walz’ DDoS attack, while perhaps more mischievous than malicious in intent, was certainly disruptive.
“The plan?” he wrote in his post. “At dusk, 50 people went to San Francisco’s longest dead-end street and all ordered a Waymo at the same time.”
When the herd of self-driving cars eventually arrived, Walz wrote that he and his co-conspirators didn’t bother getting in.
“They left after about 10 min and charged a $5 no show fee,” he wrote. “Everyone was giddy, and when another car showed up there were cheers. Maybe 3 or 4 real drivers — all laughed and just drove around.”
Ultimately, the poster said that Waymo “handled this well.” When it realized it was being spammed, the company’s ride-hailing app disabled “all rides within a two block vicinity until the morning.”
“I assume this isn’t much different than if a big concert had just ended,” Walz speculated. (“That’s Waymo than they accounted for,” another poster quipped.)
Waltz’s laid-back attitude makes it pretty clear the stunt was all in good fun, but others have targeted Waymo with real grievances. In 2023, the activist group Safe Street Rebel carried out what it called “The Week of the Cone,” protesting driverless Waymos throughout San Francisco with traffic cones placed on the vehicles’ hoods. Once in place, the cones are perceived as traffic obstacles, effectively stopping the self-driving cars dead in their tracks.
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