Yandex shuts down data centers after drone attacks disrupt cloud services
Drone strikes damaged three Russian data centers, forcing Yandex to halt operations at two sites and degrade a third, causing widespread service outages.
Key points
- Yandex confirmed drone attacks damaged facilities in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir in October.
- Two data centers are completely offline, while the Kaluga site operates with degraded performance.
- The company urges customers to use alternative infrastructure for disaster recovery due to instability.
Russian technology giant Yandex confirmed on October 11 that drone attacks damaged three of its data centers, forcing the shutdown of two facilities and the partial disablement of a third. According to BleepingComputer, the incidents occurred across multiple locations in Russia, resulting in significant service interruptions for users relying on the company’s cloud infrastructure and other digital services.
The affected facilities are located in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir. The Sasovo site was hit on October 8, followed by an attack on the Kaluga facility on October 9, and the Vladimir center on October 11. Yandex stated that the Sasovo and Vladimir operations have stopped completely, while the Kaluga facility continues to operate but with degraded capabilities. The company reported no injuries resulting from these physical attacks on its infrastructure.
Context and Background
Yandex is widely recognized as Russia’s largest technology company, often compared to Google due to its diverse portfolio of services. The firm provides search engines, mapping tools, navigation systems, ride-hailing, delivery services, shopping platforms, streaming media, email, and cloud storage. Beyond consumer applications, Yandex offers business cloud infrastructure that supports a significant portion of the country’s internet ecosystem, serving both government entities and private-sector organizations.
The attacks are believed to have been carried out by Ukrainian forces aiming to cause widespread operational disruptions within Russian digital infrastructure. While the geopolitical motivation is noted, Yandex focused its public communications on the technical impact. The company described the current platform operating mode as emergency status, indicating that technical-supported communication channels may remain unstable during this period.
Who Is Affected
Customers are experiencing various levels of service disruption, with some reporting an inability to access files stored on Yandex’s cloud infrastructure. One customer noted issues beginning on October 8, including missing thumbnails for backups on Yandex Disk and an inability to download previously submitted files. These access problems highlight the immediate impact on data availability for users dependent on the platform for storage and retrieval.
According to Yandex’s status page updates, several core services remain available but with performance or availability issues. These include the Console, API, IAM, Container Registry, databases, S3 storage, and Kubernetes. Compute, AI Studio, and security services are partially available, while the Monium service remains completely offline. The company stated it cannot provide a reliable timeline for full service restoration.
What should you do?
Yandex has explicitly urged customers to utilize alternative infrastructure for disaster recovery purposes. The company warned that the remaining resource configuration is considered unstable, advising partners and users to activate any other alternative disaster recovery plans they may have in place. Technical teams are working around the clock to maintain services, but the lack of a restoration timeline suggests prolonged instability.
EU Member of Parliament Tomáš Zdechovský highlighted a potential connection between these Yandex outages and a sudden drop in communication from online accounts promoting far-right ideals in Germany. This observation underscores the broader ripple effects of the infrastructure damage, extending beyond direct Yandex customers to potentially impact unrelated digital ecosystems that rely on similar hosting or communication backbones.
What to do and how to stay safe: Yandex
- Verify if your organization relies on Yandex for critical data storage or cloud computing services.
- Activate existing disaster recovery plans that utilize alternative infrastructure providers.
- Monitor official status pages for updates on service restoration timelines.
- Ensure you have local backups of critical files, as cloud access may remain intermittent.
Step-by-step guide: Cloud Misconfiguration Response: Containment, Recovery and Prevention Steps
General security guidance from the Threat Times newsroom. It is not confirmed advice from the organisations named in this story.
Frequently asked questions
Which Yandex data centers were damaged by the drone attacks?
The facilities in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir were damaged, with attacks occurring on October 8, 9, and 11 respectively.
Are any Yandex services still fully operational?
No services are fully unaffected; some are available with issues, others are partially available, and Monium is offline.
Did Yandex provide a timeline for fixing the outages?
No, Yandex stated it cannot provide a reliable service-restoration timeline and urged users to use alternative plans.
