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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Attacks on Yandex data centers paralyzed part of the services: recovery may take up to half a year
After attacks on the data centers of the Russian Yandex, the company faced service outages, and automated traffic from its network sharply decreased. According to industry representatives, restoring the damaged infrastructure may take at least six months. At the same time, claims that due to the attacks online support for the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the MAGA movement in the United States decreased by 56% are not independently verified.
This is reported by Russian and international media, including Kommersant and The Insider.
According to Cloudflare Radar, which recorded a sharp drop in automated HTTP requests related to Yandex's network. Tom's Hardware reported that the indicator fell to 0,4% of the maximum inquiry level for this network over the previous two weeks.
However, these data reflect traffic for a specific network, not the number of bots on social networks, political comments, or activity of accounts on Facebook and X.
On social networks, claims circulated that after the attacks online support for AfD and the MAGA movement allegedly fell by 56%, and that the number of accounts inflaming hostility between Poles and Ukrainians also decreased. These statements, notably linked to the Polish analyst Jarosław Wołoski, do not have publicly available independent verification proving the stated metrics and their direct link to the attacks.
Latvian public media LSM relayed these claims but did not provide independent methodology or data sets confirming a drop exactly by 56%. Polish outlet Gazeta.pl also noted that Cloudflare statistics cover all automated traffic of the respective infrastructure, not only propaganda activity.
Automated requests include not only political bots, but also search crawlers, scripts, and other technical systems. Therefore, a reduction in such traffic by itself does not prove the disappearance of influential networks or a decrease in support for certain political forces.
According to The Insider, a supercomputer named Galushkin was located in Vladimir, one of Russia's most powerful. Two other similar supercomputers were housed at Yandex’s data center in the Ryazan region. Thus, damage to facilities in Vladimir and the Ryazan region could affect all three sites where these computing systems were located.
Will the equipment be restored?
Recall that on the night of 8 October, the Yandex data center in Sasovo was taken offline; on 9 October, the facility in Kaluga was damaged; and on 11 October, the company reported the shutdown of the data processing center in Vladimir. Yandex confirmed infrastructure damage and service outages.
According to Kommersant, citing industry experts, the company plans to purchase equipment to restore the damaged data centers through all available channels, including abroad. However, large volumes of equipment may not arrive until at least six months. Rapid infrastructure recovery by the end of the year is considered unlikely by experts.
Extensive purchases could also drive up the cost of server equipment and cloud services. Estimates indicate that the cloud segment of Yandex previously accounted for about 2–4% of total company revenue, or approximately 30 billion rubles.
Which services were affected by the attacks
Some company services remain unavailable. Reports included issues with Yandex Pay, Yandex Food, Yandex Pro, Yandex Go, and Yandex Music. Users also complained about outages at other Russian companies and platforms, including Magnit, M.Video, Dom.Ru, Lamoda, and Flowwow.
Yandex's advertising network also reported temporary inaccessibility of its site and support service.
In the wake of the attacks, Russia’s digital and military agencies began discussing additional protection for critically important IT infrastructure facilities. According to Maksut Shadayev, head of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, the company faced an unprecedented attack.
Recall that the Ukrainian Defense Forces on 6 October and in the night of 7 October struck several military facilities of the Russian forces. Among the targets were the Yesha airfield, EW and radar stations, UAV command points, and depots.
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