In response to Russian attacks on Ukraine, Kiev has attacked data centers of the Russian concern “Yandex“, which provides various online services. In terms of their scale and their impact on the lives of Russians, the Ukrainian drone attacks on the “Yandex“ data centers, carried out in response to the ongoing Russian attacks in Ukraine, exceed even the effect of those against the Russian online platform Wildberries this summer. In a few nights, Ukrainian drones destroyed or seriously damaged three of the six data centers of “Yandex“ in the Ryazan, Kaluga and Vladimir regions.
Crash of various services
Then, crashes began in the work of the ten main products of the company “Yandex“ - these are services for payments, entertainment, deliveries, taxi calling and others. There were also crashes in more than a dozen external companies using “Yandex“ servers. And it was not only websites or delivery services that suffered. For example, the company Sinocare, whose products allow people with diabetes to monitor their blood sugar levels online, reported disruptions.
DV asked its readers on social networks to share, on condition of complete anonymity, how the internet outages caused by the attacks on the “Yandex“ data centers have affected their lives.
"I can't access my money, they will charge me interest"
Several people shared about problems with payments - for example, for foreign subscriptions on the digital online trading platform GGSel or in the “Yandex Pay“ application, which was blocked. Meanwhile, the company assures that all funds are safe, but does not say when everything will work again.
Another reader of DV said that he has an account in “Yandex Bank“, but does not have access to his money, and he needs to pay the next installment on a mortgage loan and is afraid that he may be charged interest for late payment.
"We went back 10 years"
Other participants in our impromptu survey talk about problems in the operation of taxi services, because of which they missed important meetings or were late for them. A taxi driver wrote that for the second day now the “Yandex Taxi“ service has been down either does not work, or works intermittently - “as it was 10 years ago“, he adds.
There are also problems in neighboring countries
Service failures are also reported from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Belarus and Serbia. “Individual technological components can be located on servers in different countries, and problems in one of them can affect the availability of services in several countries“, the press service of the Kazakh “Yandex Go” reported.
The vulnerability of the so-called “sovereign internet”
As noted by IT specialist and eQualitie project coordinator Leonid Yuldashev, the construction of the “sovereign internet“ by the Russian authorities and its separation from the global network through bans and blockades have made Russians even more vulnerable. The state is forcing people to use local services, to which more and more data is gradually being transferred. That is why failures in the work of large Russian platforms affect more and more users and companies, Yuldashev notes.
Two teachers who use the “Yandex Telemost“ service for their online lessons told DW that they cannot work normally and are forced to look for an alternative. A student from the National University “Higher School of Economics“ wrote that the entire schedule and teaching materials are stored in “Yandex Tables“, which is now having problems.
Will “Yandex“ manage to recover?
According to Yuldashev, building a data center from scratch takes two to three years – "besides the money, which has to be found somewhere," he emphasizes. The expert believes that "Yandex" will probably cope with this task, and sources from the "Kommersant" newspaper expect the delivery of equipment to replace the out-of-order equipment to take up to six months. In any case, the market is different and "Yandex" will have to buy the equipment in question on "the most expensive market in years," Yuldashev adds.
Is it possible to move data centers abroad?
Wildberries also found itself in a similar situation - the company began to look for alternative capacities in Kazakhstan. In the case of “Yandex“, moving capacities to other regions or countries is also possible, but this will require significant costs and will take at least a year until new buildings appear and the appropriate equipment is purchased, Yuldashev is convinced. In addition, there is an additional obstacle: current Russian legislation prohibits cross-border data transfer, he recalls.
Source: www.dw.com