Ukrainian drones struck and partly disabled a Yandex data centre in Russia’s Kaluga region on Friday, the Russian technology company said. The attack came a day after Ukraine hit a larger and more important Yandex site.
On Thursday, a Ukrainian attack shut down the company’s major data hub in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, Reuters reported. That hub houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to build its AI model.
“Data centres are the iron heart of Yandex. Their operation is critical for services that have become part of people’s everyday lives,” the company said in a statement.
Yandex said it was still checking the damage from the Sasovo strike. It could not confirm whether the equipment could be restored.
The company is heavily involved in Russia’s AI work and is sometimes called Russia’s Google. It said the attacks had struck at the core of its operations. It was working around the clock to keep its services running.
“Right now, this is our most important task, but unfortunately it is not an easy one,” Yandex said.
The full extent of the disruption was not clear. Messages appeared on at least one Yandex app warning users of possible problems.
Several other online services in Russia also reported technical problems on Thursday, according to Reuters. These included property portal Cian, book portal Litmarket and the websites of Russian Railways and football club Spartak Moscow.
Maryana Lazaricheva, head of equity research at T-Investments, said the risks went beyond services going offline and lost revenue. She said the company’s large base of business clients was also exposed.
She said Yandex could move some of the load to its other data centres. “However, if the chain of attacks continues, this possibility vanishes, which could lead to even more severe consequences,” she said.
Yandex runs five data centres, and two have now been hit. Of the other three, two are in the Moscow region and one is in the Vladimir region, according to public information.
In 2021, Yandex said the Sasovo hub hosted two supercomputers built around Nvidia A100 chips. It uses them to train its YandexGPT large language model. The company has declined to say whether they were affected.
Russia has struck Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications sites over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine was hitting back.
“We always respond in mirror-like fashion,” Zelensky said. “You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding.”
After more than four years of war, both sides have widened drone attacks on infrastructure this year. Targets have included energy plants, refineries, ports, oil and grain ships and e-commerce warehouses.
Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centres have forced some to stop working. One attack left 100 000 households without internet access for a time, Reuters reported.
Ukraine’s digital minister told Reuters last month that the country was moving its digital infrastructure underground in response.
Source: this article is based on reporting by TechCentral. Image: TechCentral. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.