Ukrainian drones knock out two Yandex data centers in Russia
Ukrainian drones hit two data centers run by Russian tech giant Yandex on Thursday and Friday, knocking one fully offline. One site holds supercomputers that train Yandex's AI chatbot. Apps, banks and websites across Russia reported trouble, and Yandex shares fell more than 4%.
Ukrainian drones struck two data centers owned by Yandex, Russia's biggest internet company, on back-to-back days this week.
The first strike hit Yandex's data center in Sasovo, in Russia's Ryazan region, on Thursday. It started a fire and shut the site down completely, Yandex told CNBC. "We cannot confirm whether the equipment at our Sasovo data center can be restored," the company said Friday. Yandex has said the Sasovo site holds two of the three supercomputers it uses to train its YandexGPT AI model.
On Friday, drones hit a second Yandex data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, Reuters reported in The Straits Times. Ukrainian arms maker Firepoint said its FP-1 attack drones were used and that several parts of the site were knocked out. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it "our tit-for-tat response" to Russian strikes on Ukraine's data centers.
Yandex is often called Russia's Google. Millions of people use it every day for search, maps, music, movies and food delivery, and many businesses rely on its cloud. Users reported problems with the Ivi streaming app, the T-Bank digital bank and Russian Railways, Ars Technica reported.
The owner of one small dating app said none of its 8,000 users had been able to log in since Thursday, The Straits Times reported. Yandex said it had made deals with other cloud firms so customers could move their data. Its shares fell more than 4% in Moscow.
Both countries have widened their drone wars this year to hit refineries, ports, warehouses and now data centers. Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers have cut phone and internet service for thousands of people since late September, Ars Technica reported. The regional governor said nine people were hurt in Ukraine's attacks.
What we know: Two of Yandex's five data centers were hit, and one is fully offline.
What we don't: Whether the AI supercomputers at Sasovo were damaged.
Where outlets agree The Straits Times and Ars Technica both report that the Sasovo site houses two of Yandex's three AI supercomputers and that Firepoint's FP-1 drones were used against the Kaluga site.
Where they differ CNBC reports Yandex said its core services were unaffected, while The Straits Times reports Yandex said keeping its services running was a difficult challenge.