Drone attacks hit three Yandex data centers, and bot traffic from its network dropped sharply. Public data shows a partial rebound and includes search crawlers, limiting what can be inferred. We look at cloud recovery capacity and the impact on corporate paperwork.
Ukrainian drones hit three of Russian tech giant Yandex’s data centers in four days. Ukraine’s president says the bots thinned out too
Lithuania’s prime minister wants more such strikes to protect elections. Researchers say the bot data shows Yandex’s web crawlers, not trolls.
Russia's Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes cripple multiple of 'Russia's Google' data centers — Ukraine intensifies bombing of Yandex data centers in response to Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv data centers
The world is getting a break from Russian bots thanks to Kyiv.
No, Ukraine's strikes on Yandex data centers didn't cripple Russian influence ops
Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian data centers sparked viral claims about a sudden drop in Russian influence operations on social media — even as experts see no evidence to support this. Kyiv struck data centers run by Yandex — Russia's "answer to Google" — in three different regions between Oct. 9 and 11, a response to Russian strikes against similar facilities in Ukraine. Yandex acknowledged the attacks, noting that its data center in Vladimir Oblast had to be shut down due to damage a
Rapid-response fact-check: "Yandex Strikes Caused Russian Bot Activity To Drop By 50 Percent" Is False | Joohn Choe
This is going on viral on Facebook today and it's unfortunately wrong. Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers in Russia did not cut
Drone attack forces Yandex to shut down its data center on the grounds of a sanctioned Russian machine-tool plant
In Bashkortostan, Ukraine's General Staff says its forces hit a Gazprom refinery. Salavat's mayor says an unnamed enterprise there keeps working.
Yandex bot traffic drop isn’t a Russian bot farm collapse
0.4% Yandex bot traffic drop reflects stalled web crawling, not proof that Russian troll farms went offline. Read what the data shows
Ukraine’s Strikes on Yandex Data Centers, Explained
A wave of attacks against the Russian internet giant Yandex has sent shockwaves across the country in recent days and caused major disruptions to daily life.
Ukrainian drone strikes have plunged Russia’s internet into crisis. Meduza explains why the damage has been so extensive, and why a full recovery will likely take months. — Meduza
Overnight on October 11, Ukrainian forces launched a drone strike on a Yandex data center in Russia’s Vladimir region. It was the third attack in a row on the Russian tech giant’s infrastructure: On October 8 and 9, drones targeted facilities in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, and in Kaluga, respectively.
Did “Russian bot traffic” really disappear after Ukrainian strikes on Yandex servers?
Despite multiple Ukrainian strikes hitting Yandex servers in Russia, a thread by antibot4navalny, which has long tracked state-sponsored social media campaigns and troll farms, explains that the Cloudflare “Bot Traffic” chart many people have cited is really about automated web crawlers operated by Yandex accessing the web. It’s not connected to “bots” posting on social media, and Russian bot/crawler traffic overall continues to be about the same as normal. Still, are you noticing any difference in the posts and comments you’ve seen online? [Media: https://bsky.app/profile/antibot4navalny.bsky.social/post/3mxmv7t6nxc27]
Bot Traffic from AS13238 | Cloudflare Radar
Bot Traffic trends and insights from AS13238 YANDEX Yandex LLC.
Bot Traffic from AS13238 | Cloudflare Radar
Bot Traffic trends and insights from AS13238 YANDEX Yandex LLC.
Ukraine knocked out key Yandex data centers. The fallout is being felt across Russia. — Meduza
Ukraine has struck three of the six data centers belonging to Yandex, a Russian technology company, in Sasovo (Ryazan region), Kaluga, and Vladimir. Kyiv called the strikes a response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers, which Russian forces have been striking lately. The infrastructure of the company’s “iron heart,” as Yandex calls its data centers, has been damaged. Operations at two of them — in Sasovo and Vladimir — have been halted. At the data center in Kaluga, “several modules have been completely knocked out.” Outages have plagued the Russian internet since the strikes began: not only Yandex’s services but also the websites of other companies and even media outlets have been operating with restrictions. Users abroad have also complained about problems with Yandex’s apps. As of October 12, the company had not managed to restore their operation. Here’s a look at the consequences of the Ukrainian strikes that Yandex and its users have faced.
Yandex: Ukraine strikes data centre in third attack on Russian tech giant
It is the third time this week that Ukraine has targeted Russian tech giant Yandex, forcing the company to suspend its operations.
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault
“3️⃣ Yandex is a search engine (among many other things). Which, by design, has crawlers (automatic robots) that browse web sites to index the Internet—which is how it then searches it on your behalf. Which (very likely) is exactly what CloudFare detects as (ro)bot traffic.”
Y’all, I hate to rain on the dead bot parade, but the Yandex data center destruction doesn’t seem to have significantly impacted social media bots. I made temporal graphs of X posts about AfD around the time of the attack and there’s no sign of a sudden dip or residual impact on that conversation.
