Maybe they managed to also steal or encrypt data, and now the media attention in a sense helps the hackers claim extortion money? Since the showlights are now on that company?
True, but going back to the original argument, if hackers did manage to steal data, that makes the idea of spending time trying to prevent all the taxis from being sent to one place even stupider. In the world where YandexTaxi had extra time to spend on something, they should have spent it on securing their data better.