Man Launches "World's First Waymo DDoS" by Ordering 50 Robotaxis to Dead End Street

"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.""

""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.""

A 23-year-old tech prankster organized fifty people to simultaneously summon Waymo vehicles to a San Francisco dead-end street and then refuse pickup, generating multiple no-show fees and disrupted service. The coordinated orders resembled a distributed denial-of-service attack by flooding the ride system with requests and overwhelming local availability. Participants celebrated as cars continued to arrive while a few human drivers laughed and drove away. Waymo responded by disabling all rides within a two-block vicinity until the morning to mitigate the spam. Other groups have targeted Waymo previously, including a 2023 action by Safe Street Rebel called "The Week of the Cone."

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