Ukrainian attacks on Russian tech giant Yandex data centers have led to a 60 percent drop in online activity from Russian sources targeting Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
He made the claim while presenting Israel's new security doctrine. “I don't know if you noticed, but there was an attack on the company “Yandex“ in Russia. 60 percent of the online activity of Russian users targeting us has disappeared. "This speaks volumes about the power involved here," Netanyahu said.
He said the incident showed how disrupting digital infrastructure can affect information campaigns. The Israeli prime minister said his country needs to develop such capabilities and is already taking steps in that direction.
A series of attacks on data centers
The first attack on a Yandex site was carried out on the night of October 8 in Sasovo, Ryazan Region. The company confirmed that the center had stopped working. The following night, a larger complex in Kaluga was hit, and on October 11, a data center in Vladimir Region was also attacked.
The attacks caused disruptions to a number of services used daily in Russia. Le Monde reported problems with email, ride-hailing apps, the Yandex Pay service, the Alice assistant, dating sites and electronic access systems for apartment buildings in Moscow. Some of the services later resumed work, but the company's infrastructure remained limited.
Is there evidence of a drop in bots?
Netanyahu's claim of a 60 percent drop has not been independently verified. Le Monde said that graphics circulating on social media do not prove a direct link between the Yandex attacks and a decrease in posts or automated activity against Israel.
Analysis cited by Tom's Hardware suggests that some of the automated traffic from Russian sources may have been redirected to other hosting providers. According to the data cited by the publication, the total volume of some of the harmful automated traffic has remained almost unchanged, although activity through “Yandex Cloud“ has dropped sharply.
So far, the outage of key data centers and the subsequent problems with Russian digital services have been confirmed. The connection between these attacks and the specific decline in anti-Israeli bots remains a claim by the Israeli prime minister, without a published detailed methodology or independent assessment of the stated percentage.
Sources: news.bg, lemonde.fr, tomshardware.com