Ukraine Strikes Yandex Data Centers, Bot Traffic Falls to 0.4%

    Bot traffic fell sharply following Ukrainian drone strikes on major Yandex data centers in Russia. Bot traffic refers to requests sent to a network by automated programs. According to Cloudflare data, this traffic fell to 0.4% of its peak over the past 2 weeks. The decline occurred over several days and coincided with disruptions to Yandex systems. Yandex is one of Russia’s largest search and cloud service platforms.    The first significant decline was recorded after a strike on the Yandex data center in the city of Sasovo on October 8. At the time, bot traffic fell to about 57% of its peak. The center housed 2 supercomputers that performed large-scale computations. The facility is approximately 314 km southeast of the Kremlin.    The larger Kaluga campus, approximately 354 km west of Sasovo, was disconnected from the internet on October 10. Another sharp decline in network traffic was recorded following a new attack on data centers in the city of Vladimir on the morning of October 11. The Yandex Cloud service status page shows that at least 84 services are down. The disruptions are affecting both companies and ordinary users.    According to NetBlocks measurements, traffic on the Yandex Cloud network fell to 30% of normal levels. The figure for the Yandex LLC network was 63%. The decline could cause some internet services in Russia to slow down or stop completely. Starlink does not operate in Russia, and some Rassvet satellites also failed after launch. Therefore, high-speed satellite internet is not considered an alternative.    Strikes on data centers are a relatively new tactic in the war in Ukraine. These attacks are viewed as a response to Moscow’s strikes on data centers in Ukraine. Russia claims that Ukrainian military intelligence uses these civilian facilities. During the war, drones have served not only as surveillance devices but also as weapons for striking distant targets. Some specialized drones can fly more than 2,400 kilometers and strike Tu-95 strategic bombers far from the front line.