A software engineer who goes by Riley Walz on social media made headlines recently for revealing that he pranked 50 Waymo robotaxis to a dead end in California—an expensive stunt that mixed tech skills with mischief and mockery. On his social media account, the 23-year-old said he planned to emulate a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Waymo’s robotaxi system. At press time, the X (formerly Twitter) post has generated over 2 million views and hundreds of comments. He described the successful execution as The World’s First WAYMO DDOS, a prank that halted the ride service in the local area and added to the pile of question marks on the vulnerabilities of driverless fleets. It looks like Waltz had 50 people hail Waymo taxis at the same time to a spot he has branded as “San Francisco’s longest dead-end street.” The ensuing confusion was as a result of all the vehicles arriving at once. Following the upheaval from the stunt, Waltz returned to social media to explain that none of the participants actually boarded the cars, each of which sat for about ten minutes before leaving without a passenger. He implied that they did it for laughs back in July.
The Fallout: Harmless Fun or a Security Wake-Up Call?
“We didn’t actually get in the cars,” Walz wrote in the post. “They left after about 10 minutes and charged a $5 no-show fee. Waymo handled this well. I assume this isn’t much different than if a big concert had just ended. Eventually, they disabled all rides within a 2-block vicinity until the morning.”
Replying to Waltz’s post, Tech News had just one question:
“What was the point of this?”
Analyzing Waymo’s crisis response, Walz may have framed the stunt as a legitimate stress test. In that case, the point is that he was some kind of cybersecurity professional testing Waymo’s systems for weaknesses or exploitable flaws.
But not everyone thought it was a harmless prank. As one user observed, Waltz may have just given the devil some ideas:
“If a competitor wanted to target a certain area, they could cause this commotion; Waymo blocks the area, they continue to operate and take 100% of potential revenue. Any competitor could target a venue a day less in advance to trigger this.”
The Prankster’s Pedigree
Apparently, assembling an army of Waymo taxis on a road to nowhere isn’t Waltz’s first taste of internet-era pranking. He reportedly launched a now-shuttered website that allowed residents to monitor San Francisco parking enforcement vehicles in real time. The guy also claimed responsibility for altering Vice President JD Vance’s Spotify playlist. While no one was harmed in this Waymo prank, it would be naïve to assume no damage was done.